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e Pastor's Leadership 



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Class ~BVlt )£ft 
Book. * *&£! 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 




REV. A. F. SCHAUFFLEK, D.D. 



Pastoral Leadership of Sunday 
School Forces 

SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 

SEMINARY LECTURES 

COURSE No. 2 



DELIVERED AT THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, DECEMBER, 1902 



A. F. SCHAUFFLER. D.D. 
Secretary International Lesson Committee 



Price 50 Cents Postpaid. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 

SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR 10 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS Ol~ XXc No. 

'COPY B, 



-V 



^r 




Issued under the 
Constance Pollock 
Publishing Fund, 

===== GIVEN ===== 

March 8, 1902 
by P. D. Pollock, 
LL.D., President 
Mercer University, 
Macon, Georgia. 

Book Number Two 



Copyrighted, 1903, 

Sunday School Board Southern Baptist 

Convention. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



These lectures were given in the Southern Baptist 
Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., and on the foun- 
dation provided by the Sunday School Board of the 
Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville, Tenn., the two 
institutions uniting in this way to furnish an annual 
course of lectures on Sunday School work for the theo- 
logical students and others who wish to attend. The 
lectures were delivered ex tempore and taken down by a 
stenographer. The lecturer's habit of ex tempore address 
made it impossible for him to confine himself to manu- 
script. This will account for a certain roughness in diction, 
which the reader will easily discern. It is hoped that the 
thoughts presented will be of sufficient merit to lead the 
indulgent reader to pardon much that appears unfinished. 

The first five lectures constitute the regular annual 
course, and were delivered specifically to the students in 
the Theological Seminary, and are primarily aimed at 
their needs as leaders in Sunday School work. The 
Supplementary Lectures, three in number (including the 
one by Rev. E. Y. Mullins, D.D., President of the Semi- 
nary), were delivered to the Pastor's Sunday School In- 
stitute, which had been previously arranged to be held 
at the same time in the city of Louisville, and which 
brought together many able Sunday School workers, 
was largely attended by all denominations and made an 
occasion very inspiring and helpful in every way. 

At the request of the Secretary of the Sunday School 
Board, the Supplementary Lectures have been added to 
the others, in order to make the series a little more com- 
plete. In these also the aim has been to aid students and 
pastors in their life work. If in addition to this they 
also help the ordinary Sunday School teacher, the lecturer 

3 



4 PREFATORY NOTE. 

will be more than pleased. No one will expect that in 
a brief course of lectures the whole field of Sunday 
School activity will be adequately covered. This would 
have been impossible as the field is large, and for 
adequate treatment requires a large volume. But the aim 
has been to block out the outline of work so that he 
who desires may be aided in his further study along these 
same lines. Nothing has been given as suggestive that 
has not been worked out by the speaker in his own 
experience. The lectures are the outcome of a somewhat 
prolonged experience with teachers and scholars, and with 
the actual management of a Sunday School in all its 
details. No untested theories have been presented, but 
only those which have proved themselves practical in 
actual working. 

The writer cannot help congratulating his Southern 
Baptist friends on the most excellent work laid out in 
this annual course of lectures, especially in conjunction 
with the Pastor's Sunday School Institute. The influence 
of this on the work at large must have been very marked 
and wholesome. It really "sets the pace" for other 
seminaries the land over, and will doubtless be followed 
in other parts of our beloved land. 

In conclusion the writer begs to thank Drs. Mullins 
and Sampey, and all his other fellow workers in Louis- 
ville, for their aid and hearty sympathy in the work that 
he attempted. May the outcome of all this lecture course 
be to the glory of our Heavenly Father, and the further- 
ance of the work of bringing the young to a saving knowl- 
edge of the truth, to the end that they may render better 
service' in the hastening of the coming of the kingdom of 
God on earth. A. F. Schauffler. 

Fourth Ave. and Twenty-second St., 
New York. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Preface. 

Introduction. pagb 

By Professor John R. Sampey, D.D., IyL/.D. . . , 7 

Lectures. 

1. What We Teach 13 

2. How We Teach 41 

3. Whom We Teach 63 

4. Why We Teach 88 

5. Adjuncts in Teaching 112 

Supplementary Lectures. 

1. Bird's-eye View of Book of Acts 133 

2. Management of Teachers' Meeting 151 

3. The Pastor's Sunday School Problem and Its 

Mastery. By President E. Y. Mullins, 
D.D 167 



SEMINARY RESOLUTIONS. 



Whereas, The second annual lecture course on the 
Sunday School Board Foundation has just been given 
by Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D., of New York City; and 

Whereas, This lecture course has resulted in a marked 
increase of interest in the work of the Sunday school, 
both among- our students and the Sunday school public 
generally, be it 

Resolved by the Faculty of the Southern Baptist The- 
ological Seminary that we express to the Sunday School 
Board our profound sense of the value of the work it has 
inaugurated in enabling the Seminary to offer these 
courses of lectures from year to year. 

The course given by Dr. Hatcher a year ago has 
proved inspiring to all who heard the lectures and all 
who have read them as published since, the volume 
being classed, by those capable of judging, among the 
three or four best books in existence on the relation of 
the pastor to the Sunday school. 

The course of lectures recently given by Dr. Schauffler 
has admirably supplemented the course given by Dr. 
Hatcher, the latter having dwelt upon the ideals and 
fundamental principles of the pastor's relations to the 
Sunday school, and the former having dwelt with em- 
phasis upon its practical aspects. 

Every indication points to a growing interest in this 
course of lectures and to its increasing usefulness from 
year to year. 

B. Y. Mueeins, President. 

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 
Louisville, Ky., January, 1903. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Inasmuch as Dr. Schauffler has been for a long time 
prominently connected with the International Sunday 
School Association, having served on the Fifth Inter- 
national Lesson Committee, and being Secretary of the 
Sixth Committee, elected at Denver in July, 1902, the 
Secretary of the Sunday School Board of the Southern 
Baptist Convention has asked me to give some account 
of our method of selecting lessons for the Sunday School 
world. My own connection with the Lesson Committee 
dates from October, 1895, when I was elected by the Com- 
mittee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of the 
lamented Broadus. I was not surprised to learn from 
the members of that Committee that Dr. Broadus was 
esteemed by all as primus inter pares. For seventeen 
years he sat at the council board with his distinguished 
colleagues, and gave them the benefit of his unrivaled 
scholarship and his singularly keen and sympathetic in- 
sight into the needs of the millions who study the Inter- 
national Lessons. As a Baptist, I felt a decided quicken- 
ing of denominational pride when I heard the generous 
words of exalted eulogium pronounced on my honored 
teacher by learned ministers and gifted laymen represent- 
ing other great bodies of Christian people. 

When I looked about me to take the measure of the great 
leaders in practical Christian work into whose company 
I had been introduced, I was delighted to note the affec- 
tion and high regard shown by the entire Committee to 
Rev. Warren Randolph and Mr. B. F. Jacobs, two Baptists 
who had done much to inaugurate and mould the work 
of the International Lesson System. In a very real sense 
Mr. B. F. Jacobs, of Chicago, was the founder of the 
Uniform Lesson, "one lesson for all schools, and for all 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

in the schools." Under his wise leadership the Fifth 
National Convention at Indianapolis in 1872 decided to 
adopt the "uniform lesson." The first committee to select 
lessons for seven years (1873- 1879) consisted of five min- 
isters and of five laymen. Rev. Warren Randolph, D.D., 
and Mr. B. F. Jacobs represented the Baptists on the 
First Committee. The Methodists were represented by 
Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., and Prof. P. G. Gillett, LL.D.; 
the Presbyterians by Rev. John Hall, D.D., and Mr. George 
H. Stuart; the Congregationalists by Rev. A. L. Chapin, 
D.D., and Mr. Henry P. Haven ; the Episcopalians by Rev. 
Richard Newton, D.D., and Mr. Alexander G. Tyng. 

Dr. Vincent was Chairman and Dr. Warren Randolph 
Secretary of the first four committees, a term of service 
extending over twenty-four years. During the formation 
period perhaps these two officers of the Committee and 
Mr. Jacobs were most influential in shaping and extending 
the International Uniform Lesson System. Bishop Vin- 
cent was an admirable presiding officer and Dr. Randolph 
an ideal secretary. It was Dr. Randolph who introduced 
the writer to the Lesson Committee in Montreal in Octo- 
ber, 1895. Who could ever forget the gracious thought- 
fulness and courtesy of our noble Secretary? The burden 
of arranging every detail of our entertainment at hotels 
and of reporting the gist of an extensive correspondence 
from persons having business with the Lesson Committee, 
besides the work of recording every vote in the committee 
room on the details of the lessons before us — all this and 
much more rested upon Secretary Randolph for twenty- 
four years; and right nobly did he meet the requirements 
of his responsible position. The Fifth Committee would 
have chosen Dr. Randolph as Secretary, if he had not 
begged us to release him from the burden. He fell asleep 
three years later on December 12, 1899. The Fifth Com- 
mittee, serving from 1896 to 1902, had as Chairman Rev. 
John Potts, D.D., of Toronto, and as Secretary Rev. 
A. E. Dunning, D.D., of Boston — two capable and faith- 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

ful officers. Dr. Potts has been elected Chairman of the 
Sixth Committee. Dr. Schauffler has fallen heir to the 
difficult and delicate work required of our Secretary. 

In 1878 the number of members on the Lesson Com- 
mittee was increased to fourteen, and in 1890 to fifteen. 
The Baptists have three representatives, the Presbyterians 
three, the Methodists three; and there is one for each of 
the following denominations — Congregational, Disciples, 
Episcopal, Reformed and the United Brethren. 

The first three committees selected lessons for twenty- 
one years, covering the entire Bible every seven years. 
Since 1890 the Lesson Committee has been instructed to 
go through the Bible every six years. The Committee 
usually publishes its lesson leaflet for a given year about 
two years in advance, in order that the writers of lesson 
helps may have ample time to prepare books and period- 
ical literature on the lessons. The lessons for 1904 were 
printed and distributed among the lesson writers in the 
summer of 1902, and the lessons for 1905 will probably 
be printed and distributed in April of the present year. 

Perhaps few persons know with what care the Lesson 
Committee does its work. Two small committees of three 
each are appointed at the annual meeting of the Lesson 
Committee, one to make a preliminary draft of lessons 
for six months from the Old Testament, and the other 
from the New Testament. The chairman of each sub- 
committee arranges for a meeting of his committee several 
months in advance of the next session of the Lesson Com- 
mittee. Usually the better part of two days is spent in 
patiently mapping out the work in detail for twenty-six 
lessons. 

There must first be agreement as to the period and 
literature to be covered in any given course. Then there 
is earnest effort to find the best brief passages of Scrip- 
ture suitable for Sunday School lessons. The publishing 
houses insist that the passages selected shall not cover 
more than twelve or fourteen verses, a limitation which 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

ought never to have been imposed upon the Committee. 
This artificial and unnatural limitation could be removed, 
if all scholars had their own Bibles, so that there would 
be no occasion for printing the Scripture text in the 
lesson helps issued by the various denominational and 
undenominational publishing houses. Now that Bibles and 
Testaments are as cheap as yellow-back novels, there is 
no sufficient excuse for decapitating or disemboweling a 
charming Bible story in order that publishers may keep 
up a useless custom. 

A suitable title for each lesson must also be selected. 
To do this well one must not only know the Bible, but 
also know how to put the theme or subject in words 
which will be intelligible to the smaller scholars. The 
core, the most significant and valuable section of the les- 
son, must be marked as "Memory Verses." The Lesson 
Committee wish to encourage the habit of memorizing 
well chosen passages of Scripture. 

The primary department must be before the mind's eye 
in the selection of a Golden Text. How often did Mr. 
Jacobs hold the Committee to the work of suggesting 
something better for the little folks. He wished the 
Golden Text to be something striking, simple and deeply 
spiritual. 

The fifth and last item to be disposed of is the selec- 
tion of connected and parallel passages. The "hop-skip- 
and-jump method*' is supplemented and strengthened by 
a careful reading of these selections. With the present 
time limit Sunday School teachers cannot cover the entire 
Bible verse by verse. They must be directed to those 
sections of Scripture that are most fruitful in conversion 
and character building. 

The sub-committee having made a preliminary draft of 
lessons for six months, sends, through its chairman, a 
copy of the suggested lessons to all the members of the 
Lesson Committee for criticism. At the next session of 
the Lesson Committee the work of the two sub-committees 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

is reviewed and every detail subjected to the most search- 
ing criticism. Usually many improvements are made in 
details, and sometimes the general scheme is made better. 
Then the Secretary of the Committee takes this improved 
draft of lessons to the printer. Copies of this tentative 
scheme of lessons are forwarded to the British Section of 
the Lesson Committee for further criticism. Copies are 
also sent to distinguished Sunday School teachers, and to 
writers of lesson helps, for any suggested improvements 
that may occur to them. The Lesson Committee cares 
not a fig for originality, but welcomes light from every 
available source. 

At the next annual session of the Lesson Committee 
the Secretary brings to the attention of the Committee 
the criticisms and suggestions of the British Section, and 
all other suggestions that seem to him to be worthy of 
consideration. Attention to this extensive correspondence 
is but one item in Dr. Schauffler's work as Secretary. The 
Lesson Committee must now vote on the final form of 
the year's lessons. After six or eight hours of close ap- 
plication all the nice points raised by our colleagues across 
the sea and by other specialists are finally decided. As a 
rule the vote is unanimous, though sometimes spirited 
discussion precedes the taking of the vote. 

The harmony and spirit of Christian fellowship pervad- 
ing all the meetings of the International Lesson Com- 
mittee make its annual session a joy and a benediction. 

J. R. Sampey. 

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 
Louisville, Ky., January, 1903. 



Pastoral Leadership of Sunday School Forces. 



LECTURE I. 

WHAT WE TEACH. 

Mr. President and Fellozv Workers: 

I rejoice exceedingly that this course of lectures 
has been started, through the wise forethought and 
the large generosity of the lovers of Sunday Schools 
in this vicinity, and I trust that it may be the enter- 
ing wedge for similar courses, and I might also say 
for more prolonged courses, in all of our Theolog- 
ical Seminaries ; thus the ministers who come into 
the field will know something of the Sunday 
School phase of their work before they enter upon 
it. I rejoice also that I have the opportunity of 
speaking to you, though I feel that I must warn 
you beforehand not to expect from your humble 
servant such a brilliant course of lectures as you 
heard last year, from the Rev. Dr. Hatcher; for 
I come not so much from the study as from the 
market place, not so much from intercourse with 
those who have lived in the past as from inter- 
course with those who now are, and are yet to 
come. If, however, you will pardon me for not 
being polished, I will say at least that I will try 
to be practical. 

13 



14 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

The great difficulty, in a work like this which 
is before me is to condense into five hours the 
whole theory of Sunday School work and the prac- 
tice of Sunday School activity. Five hours! I 
need fifteen hours. I feel as though it were a 
kind of impertinence to try to do anything in five 
hours. I remind myself in this effort, of the 
deacon of a New England church to which I min- 
istered years ago — a man of not very great learn- 
ing, but very great self-reliance, who advertised 
that he would give an address in the lecture room 
of the church I served, and the advertisement read : 
"Deacon will deliver a lecture in the Congre- 
gational Lecture Room on Tuesday night at eight 
o'clock. Subject, The Universe.' Lecture limited 
to one hour." Fortunately I have five hours. My 
theme will be developed, I trust, along concrete 
lines, and mostly for you students. I have nothing 
to teach the pastors who are already in service. 
I would rather sit at their feet. I would indeed 
love to speak particularly to the ladies here, but I 
came here not to speak to the ladies but to the 
young men students. The ladies will have to be 
like that woman of old, who was willing to take 
some crumbs that fell from a certain table. Maybe, 
however, they will still get a blessing, for what I 
shall say may appeal to their own love of the child 
and enlighten their own pathway along the dif- 
ficult line of pedagogy. 

Here is a chair. And here is another chair. 
(Here the speaker placed two chairs facing each 



WHAT W3B) TEACH. 15 

other.) And here sits a teacher, and there sits a 
boy ; and the boy has a Book in his hand, and the 
teacher has the same Book in his hand. What is 
the business of that teacher? To get that Book 
into that boy — to get that Book into that boy's 
head — to get that Book into that boy's heart and 
life. Nothing else. You see how simple, therefore, 
the work of the teacher is. It shall be my effort in 
these lectures to help my young brethren prepare 
the teacher for his v/ork, because in the last resort 
in the majority of churches the Pastor has got to 
be the one to teach the teachers how to teach. 

In order that I may get that Book into that boy, 
I have got to know the Book, and I have got to 
know the boy. I have also got to know the how, 
and the why, moreover I have got to know the 
various adjuncts that enable me better to get that 
Book into that boy. When I know all these things, 
then, blessed by the Spirit of Almighty God (with- 
out whom all our effort is vain), I shall succeed. 

Our theme to-night is, therefore, "What we 
teach." The Book. Never take for granted with 
your teachers that they know the Book, because 
many of them do not. They know a little of it. 
They have misconceptions of it. They have vast 
Saharas where no blade of refreshing grass grows, 
and no springs of sweet water are found: and it is 
for us as their leaders to open its truths to them in 
such a way as they can use the Book. The gross 
ignorance with regard to the Book, at least in our 
part of the country, is paralyzing. We ministers 



16 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

are apt to take it for granted that teachers know 
the Book, and, therefore, we fly high in our elucida- 
tion of the volume. But the teachers are not up 
there ; they are on the sidewalk, and why should 
I fly through the azure vault of the empyrean, as 
a young minister put it, when the teachers are on 
the sidewalk? 

Sometime ago I prepared an outline for a course 
of lectures on the Bible, to be delivered by various 
divines to a gathering of Presbyterian ladies in 
New York. Among the characters that I proposed 
to study was David. I had omitted Solomon. In 
submitting the list to the lady at whose house the 
lectures were to be given, she said: "I see you 
have omitted Solomon." "Yes, Madam," said I, 
"I did not think he was very profitable." "Yes," 
she said, "but you ought to have Solomon as pre- 
paratory to David." 

The lecture course was prepared and the gentle- 
man who gave the first lecture was Prof. , and 

he flew away up, talked about the Peshito, and the 
Uncials, and the Targums, and the Samaritan, and 
the simplest word he used was the "Canon." When 
he got through he said if any lady would like to 
ask any questions he would be glad to answer, and 
the daughter of a Presbyterian elder, sitting next 
to me, whispered : "Please ask him what he means 
bv 'Canon.' " I said, "Professor, they want to 
know what you mean by 'Canon.' ,: And I thought 
he would faint. "If they didn't know "Canon" how 
could thev know Peshito, Uncials and Targums? 



WHAT WE TEACH. 17 

That is merely an illustration, as you see, of the 
ignorance of the ordinary layman and his wife. 
But it is going to take too much of my time to 
refer further to that. Remember we never can fly 
too low for our teachers. 

Some of you may have seen the questions which 
Prof. Coe, of the Northwestern University, put to 
one hundred students of that University. They were 
nine of them. First, what is the Pentateuch? 
Second, what is the Higher Criticism of the Script- 
ures? Third, does the Book of Jude belong to the 
Old Testament or to the New? Fourth, name one 
of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. Fifth, 
name one of the Judges of the Old Testament. 
Sixth, name three of the Kings of Israel. Seventh, 
name three, prophets. Eighth, give one of the 
Beatitudes. Ninth, quote a verse from the letter 
to the Romans. Now these were University men. 
The answers were quite extraordinary in some 
cases. One of them named as among the Judges — 
Solomon, Jeremiah and Leviticus. Among the 
Prophets were Matthew, Luke and John. Among 
the Kings of Israel Herod and Ananias. Nebu- 
chadnezzar figured both as Judge and King in 
Israel. The Pentateuch was confused with the 
gospels and in one case with the seven gospels. 
Among the Beatitudes were the following : Blessed 
are the poor in heart for they shall see God. 
Blessed are the Hungry for they shall be fed. 

What am I trying to illustrate? Ignorance of 
the Book on the part of men who otherwise are 



18 PASTOR AI, LEADERSHIP. 

intelligent. That this ignorance can be remedied 
there is no question, when teachers do better work. 
I took these same nine questions and sent them 
down to a class of mission girls, all of them day 
workers, and had them answer them on the spot, 
sure that they would give better answers, though 
they were tenement house girls, than the University 
men of the Northwestern. The following was the 
result, showing how honest work, well done, re- 
sults in gratifying knowledge of the Word. What 
is the Pentateuch? Percentage of correct answers 
of Northwestern, 60; of the tenement house girls, 
80. What is the Higher Criticism of the Scripture ? 
Northwestern percentage, 16 correct; tenement 
house, none. They did not know, though one tene- 
ment house girl answered, "Scepticism, fanaticism, 
also that the Bible does not come from a divine 
origin." Does the Book of Jude belong to the Old 
Testament or the New? Northwestern percentage, 
56; tenement house, 80. One of the patriarchs of 
the Old Testament : Northwestern, 61 ; tenement 
house, 70. One of the Judges of the Old Testa- 
ment. Northwestern, 45 per cent; tenement house, 
60. Three of the prophets : Northwestern, 47 ; 
tenement house, 100. One of the Beatitudes: 
Northwestern per cent, 52; tenement house, 100. 
A verse from the letter to the Romans: North- 
western, 31 per cent; tenement house, 70. Total 
Northwestern percentage correct answers, 49 ; tene- 
ment house, J2. 

That illustrates what can be done in difficult 



WHAT WE) T^ACH. 19 

circumstances, for the answers of these tenement 
house girls prove what can be done when the teach- 
ers are trained to do good work. It will also illus- 
trate what I want to reinforce a thousand times 
in these lectures — the need of our remembering the 
A B C's of the divine Word, that our teachers 
may teach the same A B C's of the same Word 
to their scholars. 

I happen to be lecturing just now on Sunday 
nights at a Young Ladies' Boarding School in New 
York, where members come largely from religious 
families. I propounded this question to them: 
"Suppose all the Bible must be destroyed excepting 
ten chapters, and you had the selecting of the only 
ten chapters that could be preserved, what would 
your ten chapters be ?" The answers came in, forty- 
three of them, and were tabulated. I shall not 
dwell on them in detail, as I have not time. Suffice 
it is to say that in these answers, twenty-eight made 
no mention of the birth of Christ, sixteen none of 
his death, eighteen none of his resurrection, thirty 
none of his ascension. What was in their minds? 
Why was it, upon the hypothesis that only ten 
chapters were to be saved from the whole revela- 
tion, that some omitted the resurrection and some 
the ascension, and that seven of these answers made 
no mention of birth, death, resurrection or ascen- 
sion? 

Now, surely that is of profound significance when 
you begin to test their knowledge of the Word, 
and the conception in the minds of these young 



20 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

ladies of the relative importance of parts of the 
Bible. I think I have said enough, however, 
to emphasize my one contention that we must 
begin from the very foundation in preparing our 
workers to work. Then, the foundation being well 
laid, the superstructure will stand. Because of 
this great simplicity which we have to observe, 
we must begin ourselves in very simple ways, and 
I will illustrate for example how I would begin 
with certain teachers who know very little about 
the Word. 

One of the difficulties lies here, that chronolog- 
ically speaking many teachers are all at sea when 
you come to parts of the Word of God. If you 
ask them about when Elijah lived, you would be 
surprised at the brilliant flash of silence that would 
follow. They are not posted; indeed a good many 
of them are not posted as to where to find Elijah 
in the Book, much less in history. I was preaching 
once in New York and a New York pastor asked 
me what I wanted him to read, I said, "Please 
read the third chapter of Jonah." He stepped to 
the desk and fussed around a while, and then he 
read a psalm. I thought, 'That is proper — Jonah 
will come next." But Jonah has not arrived yet; 
and when the minister sat down, he said, "Upon 
my word, I couldn't find him." "Tell it not in 
Gath and publish it not in the streets of Askelon, 
lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice." "If 
these things be done in the green tree, what shall 
be done in the dry?" If a minister can't find 



WHAT Wn TEACH. 21 

Jonah, where shall a teacher find him? We must, 
therefore, localize a little in the minds of our teach- 
ers, for the sake of their scholars, these great per- 
sons and periods in the Word of God, and that 
can be very simply done chronologically, so that 
it shall fasten itself on their minds indellibly. 

Here the speaker drew the following diagram on the 
board, as illustration of what followed : 




Let that line represent the four thousand years 
from Adam to Christ. (You understand, of course, 
that Usher's Chronology is not accepted now, and 
rightly so, but for my purpose as a working chro- 
nology it will do.) Here at the beginning we will 
put down the letter A for Adam, and at the close 
the letter C for Christ, and between the two the 
space represents forty centuries. If you should 
sub-divide in the middle and ask the average 
teacher what great man came then, he would say, 
"I don't know." It is worth our while, however, 
to put down the great man, the father of the faith- 
ful, Abraham. If we divide again, making periods 
of one thousand years, and once more call for 
names, very few would be able to give us the name 
that falls between Abraham and Adam. We will 
simply put it down, so as to expedite matters- 
Enoch falls there; and Israel's great King falls 



22 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

half way between Abraham and Christ. Now, we 
have gotten millenniums — Adam, Enoch, Abraham, 
Solomon, Christ. Once more we will sub-divide 
and make it half-millenniums. What are the names 
now that fall at these divisions? Here one falls, 
unimportant, and yet we will just put it down for 
a landmark — Jared. Here falls a great man — ■ 
Noah. Here falls a still greater — Moses. Here 
falls the builder of the second temple — Zerubba- 
bel. 

What is the use of a diagram like that for one 
of my teachers? This — that it begins to localize 
chronologically the great heroes of the Old Testa- 
ment, For example, I realize that the Book of 
Genesis covers that much of the Old Testament 
history that is included under the arc in the 
diagram — more than one-half covered by that one 
book. Whatever, therefore, is before Abraham 
must, my teacher knows, be in Genesis. But I am 
studying about Aaron, Where is he? Well, he is 
a brother of Moses; he must come near the letter 
M. I am in the time of the Judges; about where 
am I now? Between M and S, of course, some- 
where. But I am in the days of the Kings, in the 
divided monarchy. Of course I am between S and 
Z. I am with Nehemiah now, however. Very well ; 
I am then to the right of Z. 

In that way the teachers can get at least a bird's- 
eye view of the Word, and are able to somewhat 
intelligently localize the actors in this great drama 
of divine revelation and divinely guided history. 



WHAT WB TEACH. 23 

If now ycu carry this a little further you will realize 
how much help to the study of the Word these 
little explanations may be, when you advise your 
teachers to study the Word in spots. Oh, oughtn't 
they to study all the Word equally? Yes — when 
you do. When you are as familiar with Habakkuk 
as you are with the twenty-third psalm, then you 
ministers may expect your teachers to be familiar 
with him too. But when you have to pull yourself 
together to find Habakkuk, don't find fault with 
your teachers. As a matter of fact, all the Bible is 
not equally important. We could better afford to 
lose one gospel wholly than to lose the Acts of the 
Apostles, because we have then still three gospels 
left, but if the Acts of the Apostles are gone we 
have nothing left to cover that ground. We could 
vastly better afford to lose Habakkuk or Zephaniah 
than we could Isaiah. There are, therefore, in the 
Bible certain important periods where we must 
focalize our attention, with which we must be 
enormously familiar; otherwise we do not know 
the Book, and cannot get it properly into the boy. 

What are the important periods? Two signs 
will guide you in selecting the periods of supreme 
importance. Where first the narrative amplifies 
and second at the same time miracles multiply, 
there we find that emphasis is put by the Holy 
Spirit. Note what I say — the two signs must 
unite; the narrative must amplify and the miracles 
multiply, at the same point. 

The first place where the narrative amplifies and 



24 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

miracles multiply after creation is in the Abrahamic 
period, and here I will put, to signify that, a few 
dots. Here we have fourteen chapters given to Abra- 
ham and fourteen chapters given to his great-grand- 
son Joseph, and, from Genesis twelfth to the end 
of the Book, all, given to four men. The narrative 
amplifies vastly, for it covers more space in the 
book than the whole story of creation, plus the 
history of man, does, before the advent of Abra- 
ham. Here miracles begin to multiply too. How 
many miracles? We do not know. In the Book 
of Genesis there is not one miracle wrought by the 
hand of man. There are miracles, but not one 
wrought by the hand of man. In the Book of 
Genesis, excluding the story of creation, there is 
not an average of one miracle per century; but 
in the days of Abraham you find God interposing, 
and now the miraculous is more frequently met 
with, as in the theophanies, and the destruction of 
Sodom and Gomorrah. Here then evidently is a 
period on which the Divine Spirit puts emphasis. 
And there is good reason for this, for here God is 
calling out from heathen idolatry one who is to be 
the founder of the Chosen People. Here begins 
that channel of divine revelation that flows down 
from Abraham, in the large light of whose joy we 
sit to-day. Here God was beginning a new Cove- 
nant and a new effort for the redemption of 
humanity, and, therefore, that is a most important 
period, and on that we want to focalize our thoughts 
and the thoughts of those whom we lead. They 



what we; tkach. 25 

must know about the period of the founding of the 
Peculiar People. 

Where do miracles next appear in large numbers ? 
Here, during the Mosaic period; and here we will 
put many dots. There the narrative amplifies too, 
and you have Exodus (from the second chapter), 
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, all of them 
together covering a period of only eighty years. 
In Genesis we have twenty-three hundred years in 
one book. Here are eighty years in four books. 
And do miracles multiply? Surely. How many? 
We do not know; but if you choose to multiply 
315 by 40 you will begin to understand how many 
miracles there were; for excepting on the Sabbath 
manna came every day. And was that an im- 
portant period? Surely. Why? Because there 
God, having amalgamated in the furnace of afflic- 
tion in Egypt a people into a unity such as no peo- 
ple on earth ever has enjoyed, was going to trans- 
plant them into the land promised to their great 
ancestor. There was a great and most significant 
national movement. Not that only. God was there 
giving at Mt. Sinai a revelation. He was there 
laying down a legislation. He was there initiating 
a typology, in tabernacle and high priest and sacri- 
fice, which things, taken together, were to be a 
schoolmaster to lead Israel down the centuries until 
in the fullness of time Jesus Christ the great anti- 
type should appear. 

We, therefore, ought to instruct our teachers 
along these lines, so that the whole Mosaic period 



26 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

might be to them terra cognita, and that they might 
understand the grandeur of that revelation and the 
importance of that typology, which was revealed 
by God to Moses at Mt. Sinai. 

Where is the next important period? It comes 
down here, and we will call it the Messianic period. 
There again the narrative amplifies and we have 
four books covering thirty-three years. And does 
the miracle multiply? Yes, beyond any previous 
precedent. Sometimes in the life of our Divine 
Lord, I suspect, he wrought more miracles than 
were wrought in the whole Mosaic period; as, for 
example, on that evening in Capernaum, when they 
brought him all the sick that were in Capernaum, 
laying them down in front of Peter's mother-in- 
law's house, and all were healed. I need not dwell 
on the importance of that period, for we know it 
well. It is the most important period. 

See then these great spots in the Word of God, 
where we want to focalize the study of our teach- 
ers — the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, the Messianic. 
Do not misunderstand me to depreciate at all other 
parts, but merely to exalt these markedly for the 
sake of our teacher force. 

I have noticed that at conventions some ministers, 
find fault with teachers for not knowing the whole 
Bible, and sometimes they find fault with teachers 
for taking question books or quarterlies into the 
class ; and generally I notice that those same minis- 
ters would no more dream of going into the pulpit 
without every word written out than they would 



WHAT W# TEACH. 27 

dream of flying. Then they come to conventions 
with their pockets full of stones, and throw them 
at the teachers for taking their text-books into the 
class. "Physician, heal thyself." 

What we want, therefore, is to enlighten our 
teachers along the important lines, and not over- 
burden them with multitudes of discussions, which 
are well for us or for a trained mind, but simply 
multitudes of words without knowledge for them. 
I am reminded of the story of the godly old woman 
who loved her Bible dearly; and a friend selected 
a gift which he thought would be very acceptable, 
and gave her a large commentary in several vol- 
umes. Soon after he met her and he said, "How 
do you like the commentary?" "Very well," she 
says, "I find the Bible throws a good deal of light 
on it." 

Take for example another of these bird's-eye 
views of the Word, which simplify matters for our 
teachers, and, therefore, for the scholar. Look at 
some great truths which we find there. 

Throughout the Word are certain great themes 
which you will find sung by prophet, historian and 
poet. You will find them dwelt on, as a theme in 
a concerto, which as the governing theme, is heard 
over and over. A young lady friend of mine the 
other day invited me to hear her play a fugue of 
Bach's, new to her and to me. "Listen to see how 
many times you can hear the theme." I listened. 
When she got through she said, "Well?" I said, 
"Seven times." "Pretty good," she said, "but it 



28 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

was there eight times." Sometimes the left hand 
carried it; sometimes the right hand sang it out in 
the soprano; sometimes it was minor, sometimes it 
broke out into major; sometimes it was covered by 
a brilliant accompaniment with the right hand; but 
always, hidden underneath or clearly apparent, the 
theme governed all. 

So in the Word of God there are certain great 
themes which you will find running through the 
whole revelation. Sometimes they are sung in the 
major scale, sometimes in the minor, sometimes 
they are not clearly observable because of the run 
of history ; but in every book if you will listen care- 
fully, you will hear the theme. 

Here in the Old Testament is one of the great 
themes. Suppose I put it this way. "He will come." 
That is the theme that breaks out in Genesis 3:15: 
"The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of 
the serpent." It is sung there to begin with. And 
all through the Old Testament — listen for that 
theme. You will hear it again in the days of Abra- 
ham: "In thee and in thy seed shall all nations 
of the earth be blest." You will hear it again rising 
from the death-bed of old Jacob, when he says, 
"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until 
Shiloh come." You will hear it markedly in all 
the typology of the wilderness — tabernacle, sacri- 
fice, high priest. Now it is sung in the minor key, 
in the fifty-third of Isaiah, where uttering his sad 
plaint of woe, sorrow and rejection, the great 
prophet foretells the experience of Israel's rejected 



WHAT WE TEACH. 29 

Messiah. Then again in the ninth chapter of 
Isaiah, breaking out in tremendous major chords: 
"Unto us a child is born, a son is given. The 
government shall be upon his shoulders. His name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty 
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." 
All through the sacred history in typology, in 
poetry and prophecy you will hear that theme — 
"He will come." And Israel was always, in the 
person of its godly ones, waiting for its own con- 
solation, until that day when the Christ child was 
taken into the courtyard of the temple, and the 
aged Simeon who had been waiting for his appear- 
ance, saw him and gratefully cried, "Now, Lord, let- 
test thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine 
eyes have seen thy salvation." 

That is one of the themes in the Old Testament. 
Gentlemen, teach your teachers to listen for that 
theme, to see where it appears, to greet it, to under- 
stand it, to try to teach it to those who are under 
their care. 

The theme changes, however, in the gospels, and 
on Bethlehem's plain you hear the chorus of angels, 
not now saying, "He will come," but "He has 
come." "Unto you is born this day in the City of 
David a Saviour," and the long-waiting centuries 
close with the joyous revelation of him through 
whom God now is to speak to his people more 
clearly than he did to them through the lips of holy 
men of old. The four gospels bring it out on every 
page, almost in every verse — "He has come." The 



30 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

angels announce it; his deeds confirm their an- 
nouncement, and his teachings say "Amen" to his 
deeds. 

The theme changes again. We are now on the 
Mount of Olives. There are there eleven men with 
upturned faces. Two men are found standing by 
their side in white apparel, and as they turn from 
their upward look to gaze into the countenances of 
these men, the great New Testament theme is 
changed, and now it reads : "He will come again." 
"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 
heaven? This same Jesus shall come in like man- 
ner as ye have seen him go," and from that day on 
through the whole New Testament this newer 
theme rings until at last comes the prayer: "Even 
so come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." On this ac- 
count the true waiting people of God are those 
whose eyes are not fixed so much on the past, as 
on the future, and who listen for, long for, and 
pray for that triumphant coming of Israel's King 
which shall be one, not one of humiliation and 
shame, but of exceeding glory. 

Here is a result of what precedes the blackboard 
read as follows: 

WILL COME 

HAS COME 

WILL COME AGAIN 

These are the three great themes. There are 
none superior to these in the Word. Oh, that the 
teachers might listen for those themes, catch them, 



WHAT W3 TICACH. 31 

remember them, ring them out to their scholars 
understandingly. It is for us as leaders to see to 
it that their hearing shall be acute, that their method 
of listening shall be intelligent, and that their vocal- 
ization again of what they have heard shall be sweet 
and simple. 

Oh, when you come to deal with what to teach, 
there is no end to it. We are instructed in these 
days to study the Bible as literature, and the in- 
junction is one to be heeded, especially if we realize 
that the Bible is not merely literature but that it 
is a unique literature, that there is no other litera- 
ture like it. Our teachers hardly understand the 
composite character of this volume. They hardly 
realize that it is composed of sixty-six volumes. 
They only vaguely understand the varied character 
and varied conditions of those who have con- 
tributed to this great volume. It illumines their 
understanding if they are told that here are men 
of great culture, like Moses and Paul, and men of 
no culture, like Amos and John and Peter, all con- 
tributing to one divinely inspired volume. It clari- 
fies the teacher's mind to understand that there 
were men who wrote behind the bars, like Jeremiah 
and Paul, and men on the throne, like David and 
Solomon. They begin to understand the Book 
better as they begin to appreciate the variety that 
is to be found in its pages. Very few of them 
realize that between the days of Moses and the days 
of John the Evangelist, sixteen centuries passed. 
When they grasp this and when then they under- 



32 PASTOR AI, I/EADERSHIP. 

stand that all of these men were singing one of these 
three themes, and that the three themes were cog- 
nate, and that the educated and the ignorant, the 
monarch on the throne and the prisoner behind the 
bars all were singing the divine theme, and sang 
all up to the standard pitch — when they begin to 
understand that, then they begin to understand why 
we consider the Word of God inspired. Then they 
begin to see how, behind the culture and the igno- 
rance, behind the monarch and the peasant, behind 
the king and the prisoner, there was one super- 
ative, ever-abiding personality, and his influence was 
felt by Amos and Moses, by Paul and Peter ; then 
they begin to realize as never before what it means 
when it says, "Holy men of old spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." Now at last they begin 
to get a grip on the truth that "all Scripture is 
given by inspiration of God," and, building thus 
on a divinely laid foundation, they build with con- 
fidence and not with fear. 

When we thus make our teachers understand 
some of the characteristics of the Word, they will 
say with the Psalmist, "Thy words are sweeter to 
my mouth than honey and the honey comb," and 
then they will believe that this Word cannot be 
weighed against gold, though it be fine, or jewels, 
though they be precious. 

Take another method of study, by means of 
which, we can make our teachers understand the 
joy of this Word. I apprehend that most teachers 
have an idea that when Amos sat down, for ex- 



WHAT WE TEACH. 33 

ample, to write his book, he sat down in the way 
in which we sit down to write a composition, and 
worked away at it until he finished it. Now, if 
there is one way in which Amos did not work, that 
is the way. Like all prophets, the major part of 
what has been given us he spoke first and wrote 
next. Jeremiah wrote, because he could not speak 
— he was shut up in prison. But Amos and these 
other men spoke, and then what they uttered was 
condensed and we have the notes of what they said. 
Make the teacher understand this, and then try and 
make living the method of Amos, and they will 
fall in love with that prophet and will admire 
his astuteness. Amos, you remember, was from 
the Southern kingdom, and went to prophesy in the 
Northern kingdom — a very delicate task; for the 
Northern kingdom hated the Southern kingdom 
and the Southern kingdom paid them back in their 
own coin. It was as delicate a task as it would 
have been just before our Civil War for a North- 
ern minister to come South and lecture to you 
Southerners as to your duty, or for a Southerner 
to come North and lecture to us as to our line of 
action — a very ticklish enterprise on either side. 
Oh, if we in our ministry were half as wise and 
shrewd as Amos was, we should have larger re- 
sults. Imagine him now coming to Bethel in the 
Northern kingdom, where Jeroboam had set up one 
of the golden calves. He comes and wants so to 
present his message that it shall be accepted, if pos- 
sible. I apprehend that his discourse was delivered 

3 



34 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

at various times, on successive days, and that we 
merely have here the pith of several addresses. 
Imagine it. Here he comes and begins : "Thus 
saith Jehovah, for three transgressions of Damas- 
cus and for four, I will not turn away the punish- 
ment thereof." He is speaking in the courtyard 
at the place of worship at Bethel, and they listen 
to see what the man might say, and are rather 
pleased to hear. "What did he say? Damascus? 
Oh, that is our great enemy on the northeast. That 
is rather good. A good clever man, though he is 
a Southerner." When he gets through, he says, 
"I will speak again here to-morrow." So they 
come out. Now, he. says: "For three transgres- 
sions of Gaza and for four, I will not turn away 
the punishment thereof." "What did he say? 
Gaza? AVhy, that is the Philistines down there at 
the southwest, that have been a thorn in our flesh, 
and he is down on the Philistines. Well, that's a 
fine fellow — he has got a level head, that man has. 
He is down on Damascus, and he is down on the 
Philistines and he says Jehovah will not turn away 
the punishment thereof. Well, that's the kind of 
a preacher I am going to hear, and I am going to 
get some friends too." The next day the prophet 
again thunders on : "Thus saith Jehovah, for three 
transgressions of Tyre, and for four, I will not turn 
away the punishment thereof." Tyre was the great 
maritime power of the North. Tyre dominated the 
sea, was mistress of the waves, and Israel feared 
Tyre, and when this prophet of Judah condemns 



WHAT WEJ TEACH. 35 

Tyre and denounces woes on her, it is like the balm 
of Gilead to their wounded hearts, and they say, 
"Well, we never heard a man that sized things up 
as accurately as he does. That is a man that has 
got a far-seeing mind, and, although he comes 
from the South, we will hear him again." So the 
next day he comes again and now the message runs : 
"Thus saith Jehovah; for three transgressions of 
Edom, and for four, I will not turn away the pun- 
ishment thereof." Now, Edom was he who dwelt 
in the clefts of the rocks, who felt that no power 
could bring him down, and when Israel hears Edom 
condemned and his doom foretold, Israel is filled 
with joy, and says, "Damascus, and Gaza, and 
Tyre, and Edom, these are our foes, and they shall 
fall and perish," and they accept joyfully the mes- 
sage of this singular prophet of Judah. Then the 
prophet goes on: "Thus saith Jehovah, for three 
transgressions of the children of Ammon and for 
four," and then (on the following day it may be) : 
"For three transgressions of Moab and for four," 
until the time comes when one day, as the popu- 
larity of this prophet rises and the throngs gather 
more and more filled with enthusiasm, he startles 
them by saying: "Thus saith Jehovah, for three 
transgressions of Judah and for four." "What? 
He is a Judean, isn't he, and yet he is down on 
Judah. His own people — ! Well, there is a brave 
man, that marks the crookedness of his own people, 
and dares to condemn them for it. He is the 
grandest prophet we ever saw or heard." So he 



36 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

has been preparing them day by day for his mes- 
sage against Israel, and finally the message comes, 
for at last he says : "Thus saith Jehovah ; for three 
transgressions of Israel, and for four." Now, he 
has come home, now the arrow quivers in the heart 
of Israel; and he has spoken under circumstances, 
which, if any circumstances could insure the ac- 
ceptance of such a message, would assure its recep- 
tion. When your scholars understand the circum- 
stances, difficulties, surroundings, individualities, 
complications, of these prophets, be they Amoses 
or be they Isaiahs, be they Jeremiahs or be they 
Malachis, all of a sudden the dry bones of prophet- 
dom begin to pull themselves together, bone to 
bone, and then they are clothed with flesh and then 
they stand up upon their feet inbreathed with the 
spirit of intelligence and comprehension, a mighty 
army of men speaking God's truth, uttering God's 
message to their day and to all days; and your 
teacher, my beloved brothers, begins to say, 'There 
is no book like these prophetic books. Let me 
understand them, let me be filled with fire, because 
of my grasp of their truth, and then give me a 
chance to impart them to these children who are 
under my care." 

We are told to study the Bible as literature. If 
your teachers understand a little about the literature 
of the Bible they will appreciate it more. How few 
teachers there are who so much as understand the 
formation of the psalms — I mean their poetic 
structure. I need not dwell on that, for you know 



WHAT WE TEACH. 37 

all about it, but I have seen many a teacher's eyes 
open and many a teacher's face has broken into a 
pleased smile when they understand a little of the 
antiphonal language of the psalms, which shows 
itself in Hebrew poetry in a manner which they 
have never understood. Take the ninety-first psalm 
for example, and let them understand how there is 
statement and counter-statement, there is affirmation 
and confirmation, passing from one to the other. 
Statement: "He that dwelleth in the secret place 
of the most high." Answer: "Shall abide under 
the shadow of the Almighty." Statement : "I will 
say of Jehovah, he is my refuge and my fortress." 
Answer: "My God, in him will I trust." State- 
ment : "For he will deliver thee from the snare of 
the fowler." Answer: "And from the noisome 
pestilence." To and fro the great chorus of praise 
goes, answering and answering and answering 
again, and God's people are filled with joy as they 
state and re-state and as they answer and answer 
and answer again to these superb statements of 
praise, penitence, trust and triumph. 

Our teachers must be led to understand this Book 
in some such ways as these — simple ways, plain 
ways, practical ways, comprehensible ways, remem- 
bering how restricted is the grasp of the average 
teacher, who has not enjoyed a normal or college 
education, remembering that the average teacher 
has not been to High School even, to say nothing 
of the University; and we are striking for the 
average teacher and not for the phenomenal genius. 



38 pastoral i,e;adership. 

Yet, when all this has been done and we have 
some comprehension of the Bible as literature, let 
us by no means have our teachers teach it as litera- 
ture merely; for it is more, infinitely more, than 
mere literature, beautiful though that be. For the 
Word of God is the power of God unto salvation, 
and that we must not forget. Better to have John 
3: 16 lodged in the heart and conscience of a boy 
in such a way that it cannot be eradicated, and, 
lodged there, have it blessed by the Holy Spirit to 
his salvation, than have him, without such knowl- 
edge of the Holy Writ know all the poetry of the 
ancients, and all the marvelous prophetic utter- 
ances besides the beauties of the pastoral epistles 
and the wonders of the apocalypse. For you may 
know the Scripture from first to last intellectually, 
and yet not know it as the power of salvation unto 
yourself; and there is where we want in the last 
analysis to sharpen up the teaching of all of our 
teachers, in such a way that they shall regard it as 
divine seed implanted in hearts, intended to bring 
forth harvest for time and eternity, so that they 
shall look upon it as leaven in the meal which 
leavens, bye and bye, the whole lump, as a power 
which transforms the base into the noble, the vile 
into the pure, and the demoniac into the Christlike. 

So, while I emphasize the knowledge of the 
Word of God to which we can attain, and the sim- 
plification of it for the comprehension of those un- 
der our guidance, above and beyond all, I exalt that 
knowledge of the Word that shall make it a life- 



WHAT WE TEACH. 39 

giving Word. Oh, the marvel of it ! Oh, the end- 
less miracle of it, that one verse, blessed by God, 
can save a soul! 

In an inquiry meeting a young man was assigned 
to me at one time in Moody days. No sooner had 
we begun talking than he pulled out of his pocket 
a card and said, "My Superintendent gave me that 
card on condition that I would fill my name into 
a vacancy. I never would have done it if I had 
known the trouble it was going to give me." I 
said, "Let me see that card." It read as follows: 
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son that — " and then came the young 
man's name written in — "believing in him should 
not perish but have everlasting life." He said, "Six 
months ago I filled that out and I have not had a 
day of rest since." Blessed unrest ! Blessed arrow 
of the Spirit that pierced the heart. It was like the 
bow drawn in ancient times at a venture, but it 
had pierced, and held, and quivered, until that 
night, as I trust, by God's grace, giving himself to 
this Divine Saviour personally, his prayer suddenly 
changed from one of penitence and consecration 
into one of praise, and suddenly his face was now 
as shining as it had been sad, and he said, "My 
mother is in this building somewhere. I must find 
her and tell her." 

Oh wondrous alchemy, that can change with a 
few words a life, that can chase away darkness 
with a word and introduce light; that can plant 
eternal life and the beginning of a perfect future 



40 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

into man's heart! Thus understanding and believ- 
ing in and teaching the Word of God, we shall find 
that we have something like that of which David 
spoke when he found that the sword of Goliath 
was in charge of the High Priest. He said : "Give 
it to me; there is none like it." And we say as 
ministers and teachers with regard to the Word of 
God, "Give it to me ; there is none like it." 



LECTURE II. 

HOW WE TEACH. 

My theme this afternoon is, How we Teach. 
There are five avenues of approach to the human 
mind, and five only. They pass through Eye-gate, 
Ear-gate, Nose-gate, Mouth-gate, and Touch-gate. 
The facts which pass into the mind through Eye- 
gate are vastly more numerous and pass in vastly 
more swiftly than those which pass in at the other 
gates. Ear-gate comes next, but Eye-gate is much 
swifter than Ear-gate, and the soul pays attention 
to what passes in at Eye-gate often to the exclusion 
of what passes in at Ear-gate, if the two compete. 
You may place on this platform the most brilliant 
orator the world has ever seen. He may appeal to 
your ears. If you will allow me to stand also on 
this platform and do something that appeals to your 
eyes, I will defeat him, because you will inevitably 
look before you will listen. That is the way we are 
constituted. 

Eye-gate and Ear-gate furnish the means of in- 
gress for the vast majority of facts which our minds 
possess. Through Eye-gate there march armies, 
through Ear-gate regiments, through the other 
gates straggling individuals. He, therefore, as a 
teacher is exceedingly unwise who omits the Eye- 

41 



42 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

gate approach. He must attack the Eye-gate. If 
he can attack Eye-gate and Ear-gate simultaneous- 
ly, then he has won the attention of the indweller; 
for I defy that boy who has come with the seductive 
pin, ready for trouble, to use it, if I have got his 
eyes and his ears. He will forget his pin. If I 
have his ears only he will remember his pin. 

We want, therefore, to be skillful teachers, ap- 
pealing to both these avenues of approach ; and we 
want, in turn, to instruct those under our care how 
they may wisely use these divinely ordained gate- 
ways to the minds of those to whom they minister. 
I shall not dwell on Ear-gate so much now as on 
Eye-gate. That which we see we are interested 
in, and, therefore, it becomes the teacher, as far as 
he can, to let the scholar see as well as hear. All 
secular teachers know this truth and practice it; it 
remains for religious teachers to be a century be- 
hind the times. If in our teaching we can use 
visible objects we gain much power and rapidity of 
comprehension. The fundamental principle of ob- 
ject-teaching is this — that all material things have 
some likeness to spiritual things. In this Hall there 
is nothing that has not some analogy to spiritual 
truths. The mind of the student must discern these 
analogies, making them simple and then applying 
them to the scholar. In so brief a lecture as this 
we have not time to draw out many of these analo- 
gies, but some may be given, and you will see how 
quickly and easily it can be done. Then I trust 
you will develop further the principles enunciated 



HOW WE TEACH. 43 

and the methods illustrated, and become yourselves 
adept object teachers. 

The lesson for next Sunday is little Samuel and 
his call. God called him gently, he responded loy- 
ally, and from that day on it was known that 
Samuel was a prophet in Israel. The Lord drew 
him and he followed. Here is a spool of thread. 
In teaching the lesson, if I were reviewing it from 
the platform, I should call a boy to the platform 
and say, "Close your eyes tight, please. Take hold 
of the thread. When you feel the thread draw, 
follow ;" and I should draw the boy down the aisle 
and back. Before I got back to the platform, I 
should say, "Hold back, please,'' and, I going on, 
the thread would part. I should then say, "Why 
don't you come?" and he would answer, "I feel no 
drawing." That illustrates how gentle drawing 
may be successful if only obediently, like Samuel, 
we follow. It illustrates how, if we hold back, the 
connection between us and the divine caller parts. 
If Samuel had said, "Speak not, Lord, for thy 
servant desires not to hear," the connection would 
have parted, and no one would have known Samuel 
as a prophet of the Lord. You see the application 
to every scholar who feels the drawing in his heart. 

The divine drawing power is unseen, but is not 
unfelt. In that it is like the power of this magnet 
- — it is an unseen power, but not unfelt. It draws 
— it holds. So the divine Spirit, unseen, draws. 
"I, if I be lifted up, will draw." And it holds, as 
you see here. It holds powerfully. There is your 



44 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

illustration of a spiritual unseen, but not unfelt, 
power. (In presenting this point, the speaker made 
use of a large magnet.) 

Take this same truth and illustrate it in this way. 
I put a piece of paper between the magnet and its 
armature. It still holds, though there be some- 
thing between ; but if the magnet be separated from 
the iron as I now separate it it drops. "Without 
me ye can do nothing." "Severed from me, ye fall." 

I have here a little compass. This illustrates 
divine guidance. If I am in the forest and the 
sun is overcast I know not which is north or south, 
and though I may want to go north I know not 
how to go. I take my compass out and it guides 
me. So God's Word is my compass in spiritual 
things. I know not how to go. I look for the 
divine guidance in the divine word, and find it 
points out always my true north star. 

Here is an aneroid barometer. It weighs. It 
weighs the invisible, namely, the air; and that sug- 
gests all manner of weighing by God. To Belshaz- 
zar he says, "Weighed — wanting." We weigh 
material objects though they be invisible like the. 
air. God weighs immaterial objects for we find in 
the Word that it says, "The Lord weigh the spirits 
of men." And so by means of weights and meas- 
ures, understandable by the plainest pupil, we illus- 
trate the divine measuring and the divine weighing. 

Here is this spool of thread again. I can break 
that strand easily. I double the strand, and now 
find it breaks with a little more difficulty. I run 



HOW WE TEACH. 45 

the thread in this way around my elbow and thumb, 
and then twist the strands up. It breaks with great 
difficulty. If I had put a few more strands there 
it would not have broken at all. That is like bad 
habits ; at the start easily broken, bye and bye more 
difficult to break. Bye and bye the drunkard is tied 
hand and foot, because he is bound round and 
round and round and round, and he cannot escape. 
You see now what I mean by appealing to the eye. 
You may not now be as much interested as the chil- 
dren are, but they are fascinated when you are 
teaching them through the eye and at the same 
time appealing to the ear. The first object lesson 
I ever saw, which started me along this line, was 
by Edward Eggleston, he using a watch, and he 
made me feel the power of the visible. Will you 
now kindly develop yourselves into a school and 
answer me promptly as I ask questions? (And 
might I say parenthetically, if you would notice 
how I ask questions it will help some of you 
younger men to ask questions straight.) 

What is that? (Response: "A watch.' , ) Sup- 
posing one man made that watch, to whom would 
it belong? (Response: "To him.") Why would 
it belong to him? (Response: "Because he made 
it.") That watch is very much like a boy. Can 
you give me one particular in which that watch is 
like a boy? (Response: "It goes.") It is made 
to go. Will that watch always go right? (Re- 
sponse: "If it is set right.") Will it sometimes 
get dirty and go wrong, do you suppose? (Re- 



46 PASTORAL I,EADKRSHIP. 

sponse: "Yes.") When it goes wrong, then what 
do we do? (Response: "Clean it.") Yes, and so 
when our hearts are denied, they must be cleansed. 
All of you that have hands ; please show them. To 
whom do those hands now really belong? (Re- 
sponse: "To us.") Did you make your hands? 
(Response: "No, sir.") Who did make them 
then? (Response: "God.") Then to whom do 
they really belong? (Response: "To God.") 
That is right. They really belong to God. If that 
watch does not belong to me have I a right to do 
with it anything I want to? (Response: "No, 
sir.") If that hand does not belong to me have I 
a right to strike my sister with it? (Response: 
"No, sir.") Then why did you strike your sister 
last week, my boy? Tongues we have. Whose 
are they? God's. Have I a right to use God's 
name in vain with God's lips and tongue? Minds 
we have, and whose are they? God's. Have I a 
right to misuse God's mind in thinking the devil's 
thoughts ? 

You see how readily the analogies work, and the 
scholars will see them. Here is this lamp. Please 
answer. What is that lamp made for? (Response: 
"To give light.") Our Saviour says that we are 
made for something — what is that? (Response: 
"To give light.") He says, "Let your light so"— 
what? (Response: "Shine.") Why isn't that 
lamp giving light ? (Response : "Because it is not 
lit.") Why do a great many people in the world 
not give spiritual light? They are not lighted. 



HOW WE TEACH. 47 

Before the lamp shines it must be lit, and so you 
have got to be lit yourself. Now what is there in 
this reservoir? (Response: "Oil.") Would the 
lamp burn without oil? (Response: "No, sir.") 
No. What does the oil remind you of in spiritual 
life? (Response: "Grace.") Between the oil and 
the lamp there is what? (Response: "The con- 
necting tube.") If I stop that up will the lamp 
burn? (Response: "No, sir.") No. And if we 
stop the passage of divine grace into our hearts, 
will our lights burn? (Response: "No.") 

All along these lines of light are many analogies, 
but we cannot stop longer. You see what I mean. 
There are a hundred things that illustrate divine 
truth to the mind by material objects, which we can 
use for the elucidation of his Word to those under 
our care. Now if you want five books that will 
enable you to handle these things intelligently let 
me recommend two by Sylvanus Stall on Object 
Teaching, Five Minute Object Lessons to Children 
and Talks to the King's Children ; two by Rev. C. 
H. Tyndall on Object Teaching, Object Sermons in 
Outline, and Object Lessons for Children, and one, 
just out, by Dr. Tyndall — extraordinarily clever — 
on Electricity and its Similitudes. Oh, my brothers, 
study books like those to make yourselves workmen 
who need not to be ashamed, rightly illustrating 
the word of truth. 

Can we do anything with the blackboard? Yes. 
How about the blackboard? The blackboard is 
much abused, and, therefore, by many thoughtful 



43 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

men little used. But it can be effectively used, I 
believe, in very simple ways. Many feel that be- 
cause they cannot draw pictures and make goblets 
and snakes and crowns and angels, therefore, they 
cannot use the board. I can do none of those 
things ; indeed I can hardly write straight. Never- 
theless, used with the utmost simplicity, the black- 
board can be a potency in carrying truth again 
through Eye-gate. 

Take the lesson of last Sunday. We had there 
Ruth's Choice — that was the theme ; and choosing 
— our choosing — was the application of it. We 
illustrated that in this way. 




Here is what we call the fortification of a man's 
soul, after the manner of Bunyan, in his Holy 
War, and in that fortification each one sits alone, 
and in that fortification we find this, which is the 
dominant factor in all our lives — Will. 




God's command comes to us from outside, and 
says to us all along the line, "Thou shalt," and that 



HOW WE TEACH. 49 

appeals to the individual. It appeals to his intellect 
— he understands it. It ought to appeal to his affec- 
tions and engage them. But ultimately it must ap- 
peal to his will, for we know that without that 
nothing is won. Joshua says, "Choose ye." Elijah 
says, "How long will ye halt between two opin- 
ions?" Ruth chooses. "Thy God shall be my God 
— Thy people, my people." God appeals to every 
sinner to-day, "Thou shalt," and he wants our wills 
subordinated to his will, and if we subordinate it 
our answer is 

THOU SHALT 




That was Ruth's answer — "I will; thou art my 

God." But we have the awful alternative, if we 

do not desire to respond favorably, to add one 
word: 

THOU SHALT 




There is the sovereignty of the individual. Al- 
mighty God says, "Thou shalt," and the braggart 
sinner stands and lifting his face heavenward, says, 
"I will not." There is where decision day comes 



50 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

in — when you have your decision day. You make 
them understand its solemnity by five words on the 
board, showing them how the right and wrong 
choice stands before them to-day, and on it their 
eternity may swing. 

Take another of these blackboard simple illustra- 
tions. They abound on every hand. We have, for 
example, the story of the trial of our Saviour. 
Jesus is the great character there as he stands be- 
fore his judge : 

JESUS 
BEFORE 
PILATE 

You draw out the facts of the lesson. Then 
you make them understand that one day that will 
be reversed at the great judgment, and it will be 
(reading now upward) : 

PILATE BEFORE JESUS. 

On earth Pilate could do as he liked with Jesus ; 
in that day Jesus will do what he wants with Pilate. 
But never mind about Pilate and Jesus. Bring it 
home to the class : Wipe out the word Pilate and 
substitute the word you. 

JESUS 

BEFORE 

YOU 

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Jesus 
to-day before you — for your decision. That, too, 



HOW WE TEACH. 51 

will be reversed one day, and it will be (again read- 
ing upward) : 

YOU BEFORE JESUS 

for decision. Three significant words ! But any- 
one can do such work as this. Nevertheless, you 
will bear me witness that even to your minds the 
truth is a little clearer because of the right use of 
these three words. Change this if you want to, and 
put there "Zacchaeus" and put here "Seeking" and 
put here "Jesus." 

ZACCHAEUS 

SEEKING 

JESUS 

He was seeking to see Jesus, and when the mas- 
ter came to the foot of the tree he looked up, and 
it was apparent that Jesus was seeking Zacchaeus, 
and now we may read upward again and we see that 
it makes : 

JESUS SEEKING ZACCHAEUS. 

For he says, "Zacchaeus, come down ; for to-day 
I must abide at thy house." Wipe out now "Zac- 
chaeus" and put "You." 

YOU 

SEEKING 

JESUS 

But if that is true, read upward once more and 
you will find that, like the good shepherd, he has 
gone out long ago to seek you. 



52 PASTORAL IvEADKRSHlP. 

Oh, there are quantities of these illustrations, 
these condensations of the story of the lesson and 
the amplification of the truth contained in the lesson, 
if only you will seek for them and select the short 
and clear ones. Don't multiply things on the board, 
because then minds get confused. Whatever you 
are, be two things : Clear — Short. 

One method of teaching, which never will be sur- 
passed, is the Socratic, the method of question and 
answer. There never was a better and there never 
will be. We want to study this art of questioning 
in order that we may wisely adapt our questions 
to the minds of our scholars. Questions must be 
short — they must be clear — they must call for cer- 
tain, specific, comprehensible replies. A question 
like this will elicit no reply : "Considering now the 
fact of the omniscience of Almighty God and the 
fallibility of the human reason, how do you easily 
explain the question of fore-ordination and free 
will?" The result will be no response, but only 
great astonishment and disgust. I have heard pre- 
posterous questions asked of scholars, and then the 
scholars scolded because they would not reply. Oh, 
for skill in questioning, that by questioning we 
may discover ignorance; that by questioning we 
may stimulate thought ; that by questioning we may 
induce action. He who is a skillful questioner is a 
skillful teacher. I would fain that you might have 
the privilege, as I have had it, of sitting in secular 
classes in the Normal School in New York, and 
hearing model lessons taught by selected teachers 



HOW WEJ TEACH. 53 

on what is called the Development Plan. The con- 
ditions of that plan are as folk>ws: The teacher 
has never seen the scholars before. The teacher 
must tell the scholar nothing. The teacher must 
evolve out of the scholar everything. The teacher 
must piece together what is evolved and give it 
its nomenclature. Those are the conditions, and I 
have sat entranced at the cleverness of the young 
women teachers. One lesson, for example, that I 
heard was this : 

The theme was : The uses of oils. There were 
forty boys and girls from twelve to thirteen years 
of age in front of the teacher, whom she had never 
seen. There were some spectators present, making 
the matter somewhat more difficult than it other- 
wise would have been. She stood before them and 
said, "Have any of you ever been sick? Hands 
up." The hands went up. "What was the matter 
with you, my boy?" "I had stomach ache." "Yes. 
Did your mother do anything for you?" "Yes, 
Ma'am." "What did she do?" "She gave me 
some medicine." "Well, what did she give you?" 
"Oh, she gave me some magnesia." "Yes. Are 
you all right again? That's nice. Now, wha* was 
the matter with you, my little girl?" "I had 
stomach ache too." "Well, did your mother give 
you anything?" "Oh, yes Ma'am; she gave me 
castor oil." "Gave you what?" "Castor oil." 
"Well, when we give people something to make 
them well, what do we call it?" "Medicine." 



54 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

"Then, castor oil is used for medicine?" "Yes, 
Ma'am." 

Then she wrote on the board: "Oil is used for 
medicinal purposes." 

"How many of you have sewing machines in 
your house? Hands!" The hands went up. "Can 
you run a machine?" "No." "Can you?" "Yes, 
Ma'am." "Well, does your machine always go 
right?" "No, Ma'am; it stuck yesterday." "Well, 
when it stuck what did your mother do?" "Oh, 
she oiled it." "Oh, oiled it? What did she oil it 
for?" "To make it run smooth." "Do they oil all 
kinds of machinery to make it run smooth ?" "Yes, 
Ma'am." "Very well." On the board: "Oil is 
used for lubricating purposes." 

Then she drew out that oil is used for illuminat- 
ing purposes, and for culinary purposes. She told 
them nothing ; she evolved it, and pieced it together. 
Finally she wanted to draw out this truth, that oil 
is used for manufacturing purposes, and there the 
class stuck. And the cleverness and patience of 
that woman ! How she felt, and tried one way 
after another! Finally, the class being really ex- 
cited to help in co-operation, one boy said that his 
father kept a paint shop. "Oh," she said, "Did you 
ever go to your father's paint shop?" "Yes, 
Ma'am ; I was there yesterday. I go often." "Did 
anything ever happen to you in your father's paint 
shop?" "Yes, Ma'am; yesterday I spoiled my 
trousers." "How did you spoil your trousers?" 
"I sat down in a barrel of linseed oil." "Oh, what 



HOW WE TEACH. 55 

was your father doing with linseed oil?" "Well, 
he keeps it to mix paints with." "To mix paints? 
We call that manufacturing." So she got out the 
fact from him that "Oil is used for manufacturing 
purposes." But the beauty of it, was the deftness 
with which question was applied to educe answer, 
and the cleverness with which it was put together 
to form great statements with regard to the uses 
of oils ! The next professorship you ought to have 
here is one like that. You ought to have these 
methods so set before the men that they may see 
their charm and begin to study along these lines. 

Our scholars like to see things, and if they cannot 
see them with the outward eye they like to see 
them with the eye of the imagination. Children 
are very imaginative, as we will see in detail to- 
night. They love to "make believe;" they love to 
foim pictures — moving pictures; and we in our 
teaching want to learn so to present the truth that 
it shall appeal to and instruct the imagination of 
the child, so that we may make the anecdote, the 
miracle, the parable, living. When he sees it then 
he pays attention to it and iemembers it. And 
when he has seen the narrative then you can base 
your principles of action on the facts which he has 
seen. 

Here we need to cultivate our own imaginations, 
so that we can see ; for what you see you can make 
others see. What you do not see you will never 
make anyone else see. No man can be dull as he 
tells of a railroad accident in which he was par- 



56 pastoral i,3ade;rship. 

ticipant. He cannot be dull, because he saw it. 
The trouble with us is that we do not see, and, 
therefore, we are dull as dust. 

What is the underlying principle by which we 
may reproduce these scenes of the past in their 
detail and make them living? This — that men act 
always, in similar circumstances, in the same zvay. 
If you will apply that to events in days gone by, 
as Prof. Tyndall tells us to apply our imaginations 
scientifically to the creative periods of the past, you 
will understand that that principle is the key that 
unlocks to you storehouses of action that are mar- 
velous in their vividness and powerful in their use. 

In our days if a crowd wants to get into a 
building very badly, that crowd will press and push 
and jam. If the desire is tremendously intense 
they will be rude, and will trample on each other 
ruthlessly. That is the way a crowd acts to-day; 
therefore, that is the* way crowds acted in the time 
of our Saviour ; and when we find the record 
briefly says, "They thronged him in so much that 
they trod one upon another/' that means that the 
crowd was terrific — that there were women crushed, 
that there were feeble ones trampled on. Under 
those conditions now what would men do? They 
would cry out, saying, "Stand back! Stand back! 
Here's a woman down, don't you see ? Stand back, 
will you." There must have been many a time in 
Christ's day when that cry went up as they were 
trampling on each other in mad desire to get near 
to the Healer. In our Saviour's time when he 



HOW WE TEACH. 57 

was inside of a house teaching and there was no 
rcom, no, not so much as about the door, and the 
house was on the ground floor, do you suppose that 
the windows were unoccupied? Were there not 
people looking in at the windows ? Would not you 
look in at a window if you could, if such a teacher 
were teaching inside? If you would to-day, they 
did then. 

There comes to my mind now an illustration. I 
think I used it in Louisville eighteen years ago, 
but some of you had barely emerged from the 
councils of eternity at that time, so you didn't hear 
it. Perhaps I had better give it, therefore, just to 
show you how you can work out the detail of what 
is briefly narrated in the Word of God, and make 
it living. 

The story is as follows : He was in the house. 
There was no room, not even round the door. Four 
men brought a sick friend, could not get in, went 
up, broke up the roof, let him down. The Saviour 
forgave his sins, the people murmured, the Saviour 
healed him. He went out — men glorified God. 
That is the brief story. Now build it up. Of 
course if people were so anxious to see and hear 
him the room was much more crowded than this 
Hall is, because here are aisles still partly vacant; 
and when men who are devoured with a desire to 
hear what the speaker is saying stand outside it is 
because they cannot get in it. They were absorbed 
in his teachings, and while every square foot of 
rcom inside was occupied, a crowd was packed 



58 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

against the door, listening. At this juncture, down 
come these four men with their friend. What hap- 
pened now? Well, what would you do if four of 
you had a friend on a mattress, and you wanted to 
get him in? I should begin by courteously saying, 
"Friends, we want to get in with this sick man. 
Now, won't you please make way?" And perhaps 
at a little distance from the door where the crowd 
is a little thinner they will move and make a little 
room, and then the bearers would come up against 
a solid mass of humanity. Now, what? What 
would we do? With our shoulders we would 
shove, so and so, and push, and jam away to 
get our friend in, until the poor fellow was tousled 
up and down on the mattress ; then presently we 
would see that we couldn't accomplish our aim, 
and we would have to give it up. Some one in the 
crowd would say, "What are you doing? You 
can't get in. Don't you see we are packed together 
like sardines in a box?" Then when they found 
they had to give it up, what did they do? Well, 
what would you do? Why, working away like that, 
with the perspiration streaming down your face 
you would probably set the mattress down and take 
out a handkerchief and wipe your face — and then 
what? I fancy I hear one of them saying, "Boys, 
it's no use. We have got to take him home and try 
another time." And then I don't think I am extrava- 
gant if I say that one of them would say, "I've 
brought him here and I am going to get him in. 
We'll take him through the roof." "Who will 



HOW WE) TEJACH. 59 

pay the bills ?" "I'll pay the bills." Thank God 
that at times such men can be found. But I notice 
if there is one man willing to pay the bills there 
are always three willing he should. 

So they got him up onto the roof. Now, what 
was taking place inside all this time? Nothing. 
They are listening — they do not yet know anything 
about what has been going on, but when they hear 
crack! crack in the ceiling! then every eye looks 
up, and the Saviour loses their attention instantly, 
just as I would lose yours instantly if you heard 
an immense crack up above and thought some one 
was breaking through the ceiling. They stopped 
and looked up, and then they saw a hole torn open 
and two ropes put across, and some one says, "Upon 
my word, they are going to let down a sick man." 
Then they see the mattress coming down, and 
though there had not been an inch of room before 
inside, when it came down on those Pharisees' heads 
they made a little room. 

Down he comes, right in front of the Master. 
I may pause here for a moment to say that some 
sensible man had found out just where the Master 
was sitting in that Louse, and had broken up the 
roof just in the right place. If he had been like 
some modern Sunday School Workers, they might 
have let the man down in some back room, far 
away from the Saviour. But some man there had 
prevision, and down comes the sick man just in the 
right place. Now what? Well, my brothers, if I 
had a man here on the floor in front of me, and 



60 PASTORAL I.KADKRSHIP. 

you thought I was going to heal him, what would 
you people in the lear of the house do? You 
would rise instantly, and some of you would get 
on the benches promptly, to see. There were no 
benches in that Oriental room, but they rose to 
their feet. Of course they rose, and there they 
are looking at the man and looking at the Master. 
Then comes, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are 
forgiven thee." Now look at the faces, and see 
what a change. They had been all full of curiosity 
■ — now it is anger. "Who is this that speaketh 
blasphemies?" Now the Master speaks again, and 
they are still. He says, "That ye may know the 
son of man hath power, rise, take up thy bed, and 
go thy way into thy house." Now every eye there 
is fastened on the sick man. The man gets up on 
one elbow, finds it goes all right and his powers 
return, and they say, "Look at him ! Is it not won- 
derful!" So the man rises up, takes his bed, puts 
it on his shoulders and starts down, and he goes 
out, and praise to God fills the mouths of many 
there. 

What were the four friends on the roof doing all 
this time? Well, what would you do under those 
conditions ? Would you go off and kick your heels 
over the edge of the roof and whistle a tune ? Not 
at all. They were lying flat on the roof, and if you 
had looked up from the room inside you would 
have seen four faces looking down like this (here 
the speaker fell flat on the platform and peered 
over its edge). And when they saw their friend 



HOW WE TEACH. 61 

rise and go away, instantly the four faces disap- 
peared and they went down the staircase a world 
faster than they came up, and when he came out, 
in turn every one of them, after the Eastern fashion, 
embraced him and said, "God be praised!" and he 
said, "Thank you, brothers. How can I ever repay 
you?" And they went their way rejoicing. 

What have I done ? Nothing but apply my prin- 
ciple that as men act to-day, so in similar circum- 
stances men always have acted. Now, brother, 
think your way into "Elijah on Mt. Carmel," with 
that tremendous scene, as though it were ours to- 
day. Think your way through that. Think your 
way through the story of the five thousand and the 
loaves and fishes. Think your way through these 
Bible stories. Let your imagination build upon 
them, in order that bye and bye when you see these 
things you can make others see them, and the nar- 
ratives become living things to your scholars. 

Some one says, "I haven't the imaginative fac- 
ulty." You have. I don't say that we all have 
it in equal proportion, but I do say that we can 
cultivate this imagination of ours in such way that 
five years from now we shall be far stronger word- 
painters because of the imaginative work we have 
done, than we are to-day. Not every one has ten 
degrees of talent, but every one can use his one 
talent so that bye and bye he shall come and say, 
"Lord, here are five talents that I have gained with 
my one." And this is our privilege and this is 
our joy, that as we come to teach these who are 



62 PASTORAIy LEADERSHIP. 

under our care, and to teach these teachers who 
are to reproduce our teaching, we may use prin- 
ciples that shall apply to modern life, shall appeal 
to the modern mind, shall awaken modern interest, 
and impress truth with renewed power. 

Now, in all this we must consider the element of 
time, I fancy that people say sometimes, "Oh, 
Marion Lawrance is fine; but I am not Marion 
Lawrance. It came to him naturally." No, it did 
not. It came to him with hard work; and if I have 
any facility along these lines it has come to me as a 
result of hard work — patient continuance in study, 
in experimentation, in correcting of mistakes, in 
copying of good examples ; always trying each time 
to do a little better than the last time. These are 
the stairs by which successful workers ascend. 
This is the way by which men become deft in ques- 
tioning and wise in blackboard work and practical 
in the use of objects. Oh, study along these lines; 
and never be satisfied with the attainments of the 
past, but always consider that there are heights 
yet to be won, and that you may win them ; but 
that if you desire to win them, effort, continuous 
and strenuous, must be put forth. 



LECTURE III. 

WHOM WE TEACH. 

We have briefly considered What We Teach, and 
How We Teach. Now we come to the theme, 
Whom We Teach. To-morrow night we discuss 
the theme, Why We Teach ; and the last night the 
theme, Adjuncts In All This. 

We all love to work in the best material possible. 
The artist in clay lauds his material because of its 
plastic nature, it willingly assuming whatever forms 
his artistic hands impress upon it. The artist in 
tone lauds tone, melody, harmony; these are the 
things which entrance his willing ear. The painter 
rejoices chiefly in the effect of color. He is often 
deaf to the charms of music and blind to the beau- 
ties of marble form, but is entranced with the 
warmth of color. When I was a boy I was taking 
painting and music lessons at the same time. When 
I would rather slight my music lessons, and pay 
especial attention for the week to painting, and 
came to my violin master, he would say: "What 
have you been doing? This is a shame." And 
when I said, "The painting master has been press- 
ing me this week," he would say, "Painting! What 
is painting? It is a dead thing — there is no life in 
it. But you take your violin and play a tune and 
you can break a man's heart." If during that week 
I paid much attention to the violin and little to 

63 



64 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

painting, my painting master said, "What kind of 
a daub is this? What have you been doing this 
week?" And when I said, "The violin master has 
been pushing me," "Violin!" he replied, "What's 
the violin ? Fiddle a tune and it is finished. Paint 
a picture, frame it and hang it up, and you have 
got a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Pay at- 
tention to your painting." Each was right, from 
his own standpoint. 

If, however, the artist in clay, or the sculptor in 
marble — if the wondrous musician on the violin, or 
the most superb painter, is each pleased with his 
material, how much more ought we to be pleased 
with the material under our hand. In the story 
of creation you find it recorded once and again, 
that "God saw that it was good." Sun, moon, stars, 
vegetable life, animal life — all were good. It is 
not till man appeared that we read, "God saw that 
it was very good." And of man, the child is the 
bud and promise. Much of that which is finest in 
man is that which we find in childhood. So that 
we have got that of which God said, "Very good," 
in our hands at its very best period, and for this 
we rejoice. 

In modern times much attention has been paid to 
paidology — the study of the child ; and this holds 
in it large promise of better work in the future. In 
this modern paidology, however, while there are 
great merits, there are also to be found great de- 
fects. To these defects first and to the merits sec- 
ond, I want to call attention to-night. 



WHOM WE TEACH. 65 

To begin with, modern paidology along one line 
believes that childhood develops as it is claimed 
the race develops — by the forces of evolution. As 
the race developed from the lower to the higher, 
so the child, physically, mentally, morally, develops 
from the lower to the higher. As the race in 
earlier periods went through certain experiences of 
barbarism, of cruelty, of intense egoism; so these 
paidologists teach us that children must grow up 
through a measure of intense egoism, through ex- 
periences of measurable bloodthirstiness and joy in 
deeds of violence, into the larger altruistic and un- 
selfish characteristics, which we all recognize as the 
highest possible in human nature. 

There is enough of truth in this to deceive us 
and to lead us astray unless we are careful, for 
that children do develop from the lower to the 
higher all agree; but when, as in the case of Presi- 
dent Hall, of Clark University, we are assured that 
the child's love of the violent and the bloody calls 
for a presentation in earlier years of the more 
violent and bloodier stories of Bible characters, then 
we pause and begin to wonder whether the new 
paidology is leading or misleading us. President 
Hall carries this statement so far that, as I have 
heard him say, he would not present to the child, 
until the child was about fourteen years of age, 
anything with regard to Christ, excepting perhaps, 
he said, at Easter and Christmas. Otherwise he 
would hold the child to the Old Testament heroes, 
whose virtues, he claims, are more in symphonic 

5 



66 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

union with the rougher, ruder traits of early child- 
hood. Therefore, he would have them study the 
character of Samson, Jephthah, Elijah, Goliath, and 
David. To these characters he would hold the 
child until it has reached that period when the 
altruistic emotions and motives are brought to bear, 
and then, and only then, would he present Cbrist, 
the model altruist, to the child. 

From this we differ in toto. We would present 
Christ to the child as soon as the child can under- 
stand what love is and what gentleness means. 
Fortunately for the rising generation, neither Presi- 
dent Hall nor any of the galaxy of modern paid- 
ologists will persuade one single mother to hold her 
peace with regard to the Nazarene. There were 
some men in early days who also seem to have felt 
that children should be confined in their studies to 
the Old Testament heroes ; for when mothers 
brought their children to Christ that he might take 
them in his arms and bless them, certain pai- 
dologists of that day, who antedated President Hall, 
rebuked them and would fain have relegated them 
for instruction to the Old Testament. Then it was, 
for the second time in his life, that Jesus was 
much displeased, and said, "Suffer the little chil- 
dren to come unto me, and forbid them not" So 
we stand with the Nazarene to-day, and will not be 
charmed by these modern paidologists as they 
would woo us away in our teaching of the little 
ones from Jesus, and ask us to hark back exclusively 
to the Old Testament characters. 



WHOM WE TEACH. 67 

A great deal has been written about this modern 
child-study. As you know, the study of the child 
is being carried on by means of questionaires ; that 
is to say, lists of questions are sent out by the 
thousands, which children are asked to answer 
either directly or through their teachers. These 
answers are then tabulated, and from the tabula- 
tions certain principles are evolved. There are 
many of these questionaires ; some of them have 
been wise, and some otherwise. There is great 
danger, however, in accepting the results of some 
of these questionaires, and against these dangers I 
desire to warn my younger brethren and the 
younger and more inexperienced teachers here, as 
well. There is danger that the questionaire will 
mislead us unless we are very cautious. For ex- 
ample, here is the result of a questionaire sent out 
by Prof. George E. Dawson, designed to call forth 
answers bearing on children's spontaneous interest 
in the Bible — emphasis on "spontaneous.' ' He 
sent out 11,000 copies of a questionaire, and got 
back a little over one thousand. The ages of the 
children to whom these were presented were evenly 
divided, beginning at eight years of age and going 
on to nine, ten, and up to twenty. The questions 
were addressed about equally to boys and girls, and 
dealt with three things : First, their interest in 
Bible persons ; second, their interest in Bible nar- 
ratives ; third, their interest in Bible scenes. Now, 
if the contention of a part of this new school of 
paidology be correct, when you come to Bible per- 



68 PASTORAIv LEADERSHIP. 

sons or scenes, that which is rather violent and 
savage ought to predominate. Judge of our sur- 
prise then, when we looked at the result of his 
work as he tabulates it, to find that the most popular 
character in the Bible is that of John the Evangelist. 
That gave us pause ; for John the Evangelist is the 
gentlest and the most altruistic of the Bible char- 
acters, and he ought not to have been chosen if 
certain scholars are correct in their diagnosis. I 
noticed also that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, ap- 
pears quite markedly here, and that, too, gave me 
pause. Then I began to ask, What was the date of 
the issuing of this questionaire ? And I found it 
was at the close of 1899. Then it occurred to me 
to see what the International Lessons had been for 
that year, and I found that for the first six months 
of that year we were in the Gospel of John. Then, 
as the Germans say, Dann ging mir ein licht auf — 
then a light went up to me — and I saw why John 
the Evangelist appears as the most popular char- 
acter in the whole Bible. It was not because they 
had spontaneous interest in John, but because for 
six months previously that had been dinned into 
them — John, John, John, John; and when you 
turned the stop-cock out ran John first. 

I made other investigations. Why did Mary ap- 
pear so largely? And I found that in certain sec- 
tions in Massachusetts the questions had been given 
to Catholic children. Then another light went up, 
and I saw why the Virgin Mary appeared. It was 
not because of spontaneous interest in the Virgin 



WHOM WE TEACH. 69 

Mary, but because of impressed and imparted inter- 
est. Indeed the more I looked, the more I found 
that the questionaire did not reflect spontaneous 
child interest, but cultivated child interest. This 
leads me to say with regard to questionaires in 
general that you must not accept the apparent re- 
sults of a questionaire without first cross-examining 
the questionaire itself, that you may understand 
when, and under what circumstances, and to whom 
the questions were put. Then only will you be able 
rightly to estimate the value of the results. 

In these new books on paidology I notice another 
defect, and that is, that not infrequently the writers 
at some point in the discussion begin to dwell upon 
abnormalities — upon the peculiar boy- — the neurotic ; 
upon the preposterous girl; and they often dwell 
so long on these abnormalities that they convey to 
the cursory reader a rather vague idea that all chil- 
dren are abnormal, whereas it is not one child in a 
hundred that is very peculiar. In this respect these 
paidologists, I think, are themselves led wrong 
by their peculiar interest in freaks and museum 
cases. 

When you see what lack of intelligence is some- 
times displayed in these questionaires you are filled 
with amazement. President Hall wanted me to 
send out a questionaire to certain reformed men, as 
he was preparing an essay on the theories of con- 
version. These rescued men, you understand, are 
former beats and bums and Bowery boys, and he 
sent me this questionaire which I have in my hand. 



70 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

I wrote back saying, "These men will not under- 
stand this." He then sent me a professor and he 
said, "Please. You know the men, we know what 
we want; won't you please send them?" I said, 
"Yes, I will send them, but you will get no an- 
swers, for they cannot understand them." (Remem- 
ber the class of men to whom these questions were 
to go, please.) Here is one of the questions asked: 

"Describe your feelings and your thoughts immediately 
after your first conversion. Were you aware that you 
had experienced conversion? In what particulars have 
you become changed? What was temporary and what 
was permanent in the results of your conversion? If you 
have passed through more than one similar experience., or 
through other less momentous moral crises, describe each 
one separately, giving the date of each momentous moral 
crisis." 

I sent them out. One man sent me an answer, 
saying, "I don't understand these questions. In- 
closed you will find a little tract, 'My first and last 
drink/ Perhaps that will do." That tract was 
the story of his life. Another one came to me and 
said, "Mr. Schauffler, what is all this? I don't 
understand this." Said I, "John, they want the 
story of your conversion." "Oh," he said, "I have a 
lady friend and she can write ; I will dictate to her." 
And that is all the result I got, and it was a little 
more than I expected. What kind of intelligence 
was it that sized up the moral condition of these 
men and their intellectual capacity, and then fired 
such psychological questions at them ? I told Presi- 
dent Hall, "You ought to come down to a rescue 



WHOM WE TEACH. 71 

mission and hear a man get up and say, 'Boys, 
when I came in here six weeks ago I hadn't no 
shirt on, I was sleeping on the streets, and my wife 
was afraid of me, and my children hated me. I 
came in here and I found Jesus. I am home now, 
and my clothes are fine, and I have got a job, and 
I got six dollars in bank, and when my wife sees 
me she is glad." That is their psychological ex- 
perience. 

In further elucidation of the metaphysical nature 
of many of these questions, whose answers call for 
more psychological training than most people pos- 
sess, we give the following. They were addressed 
to adults and not to children : 

For example, from a Questionaire on "Religious Ex- 
perience," we take the following questions as specimens : 
"Were you conscious of God's approval when you did 
right, and of his disapproval when you did wrong? How 
did this differ from the approval or disapproval of con- 
science? In your answer to this question, distinguish 
carefully between what you then felt, and what you now 
think about it." Again, "Look over the marked changes 
in your circumstances in life, such as occupation, place 
of residence, social surroundings or associates, pastor, 
teachers, lines of study or reading, and tell whether 
changes in your religious life have been coincident with 
these other changes. State the direction of the change in 
each case." 

Again, from a Questionaire on "Temperament," we 
take the following : "Is he a warm and intense, or cold 
and passionless soul? Does he get angry or indignant 
easily? Does he get over it quickly? When he is angry 
or indignant, which of the following are characteristic 
of him — (a) Ready feeling without action? (b) Intense 



72 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

feeling with immediate action, speech included? (c) 
Feeling too feeble to pioduce very positive action? (d) 
Tendency to brood over his indignation, but not to act? 

(e) Tendency to plan deliberate revenge, or the improve- 
ment of conditions, and action to that end in cool blood? 

(f) Fixed and unchangeable aversion?" 

Such are the kinds of questions that are asked in these 
Questionaires by the score, and on the replies the tabula- 
tion and the inferences are based. 

Now it would take a philosopher, accustomed to analyze 
his feelings to the last degree of minuteness, to reply in 
any reliable way to such analytical questions. Not one 
person in a hundred is capable of doing this, especially 
as many of these questions relate to an experience of 
many years past. As, for example, "State your age at 
each period of marked religious awakening in your life. 
Indicate in a word (as if that could possibly be done!) 
what each of these periods of awakening led to ; as, for 
example, conversion, sanctification, joining the church or 
being confirmed, restoration after falling, reconsecration 
after a period of coldness, etc." It must at a glance be 
manifest that not one in a hundred is competent to give 
a satisfactory reply to such questions as these. Of course 
these particular questions were not meant for children, 
but for adults, but even so, the replies must be most un- 
reliable at the best. Nothing very permanent can be based 
on the replies received. 

Nevertheless, the new paidology has done much 
for us, though we must be on our guard against 
some of its conclusions and some of its mistakes. 
It is true, however, that the new paidology has 
exalted childhood and has turned the eyes of thou- 
sands toward that one whom Jesus once took and 
set in the midst of them. We, therefore, come now 
to some of the merits of the new paidology. I am 



WHOM WB TEACH. 73 

not sure that there would be very much call for 
this careful study of childhood if only we who are 
adults would use our memories more than we do. 
It is most singular how little we understand chil- 
dren, though we all have been children! How 
quickly we forget! We pass out of the range of 
sympathy with childhood, and the children bore us. 
Now whenever a child bores you, be very sure that 
you bore the child equally. Use your memories 
and go back to your childhood, reproduce your ex- 
periences, and you will have a mirror of the ex- 
periences of the present children. We think that 
while their disappointments are great to them, their 
sorrows are greater than their disappointments call 
for. Not so. I remember when I was a boy I had 
a dollar saved. I went to town with my father 
and saw a pink rubber balloon, and my boy-heart 
longed for it. We asked the price and it was a 
dollar. Father said, "Oh, I wouldn't ; it isn't worth 
it." I said, "Father, I want the balloon. I have 
got a dollar." "Ah," he said, "do not waste your 
money so foolishly." I said, "I want the balloon — " 
"Get your balloon," he said, impatiently. So I got 
my balloon and was as proud as Lucifer, and went 
home and lorded it over my three older brothers 
because I had a balloon and they had not. I let my 
balloon up to the ceiling when I went to bed, got 
up early in the morning to play with it, and looked 
all around the ceiling but it wasn't there. Then I 
looked all around below, and there it was under 
the table, burst. Then burst my heart; for my 



74 PASTORAI, I<EADRRSH1P. 

balloon was gone, and my dollar was gone, and for 
me the sun was no more. Then my brothers 
laughed at me, and then I hated them. 

Absurd? Yes, absurd; but not at that time to 
me. 

My parents were in this country once for a whole 
year when I was thirteen years old. They returned 
and I went to the steamer to meet them. When 
my mother had kissed me she put her hands on my 
shoulders and said, "Why, Fred, how you have 
grown." An Englishman was standing by her side 
whom I had never seen, and he said, "Yes; ill 
weeds grow apace." And I hated him. I was 
wounded. He had no right, I felt, to say that. I 
had done right to grow. And so deep was this im- 
pression made on my mind that when I see that 
man in heaven the first thing I shall think of is, 
"You said, '111 weeds grow apace.' " 

What then? Think back, my brother, to your 
childhood. Teach your teachers to think back to 
the days when they were troublesome boys and 
giggly girls, and then we will sympathize with 
these who now tax our patience almost beyond en- 
durance. 

This child study has among others, taught the 
following good things. In early childhood we find 
children are exceedingly egoistic. Of that there is 
no question. They are concerned with themselves, 
their appetites, their comforts, their pains; and 
others' pains concern them not at all. I have seen 
a child in a beautiful family sitting on the floor 



WHOM WE TEACH. 75 

happily playing with her doll while her next older 
sister was screaming with pain. What had she to 
do with it ? She was not in pain — it was her sister's 
business. The altruistics spirit had not developed 
yet. During those early periods the child plays 
largely by itself, with its dolly, its cradle, its ball, 
its horse. The second period, commencing at about 
five to six years of age, begins to show the social 
egoistic spirit. Now children love to play together, 
boys as well as girls ; the sexes mixing. Still there 
is the ego there, as is seen by their choice of games. 
Now they play puss in the corner; the ego wins. 
Blind man's buff ; it is the ego wins. Marbles ; it is 
the ego wins. That period is called the social 
egoistic period. As yet altruism has not at all de- 
veloped, excepting in remarkable cases. Then 
comes the social altruistic period, beginning about 
eleven or twelve years of age. Now boys begin to 
play what are called team plays, when the boy 
subordinates himself to the success of his team. His 
team, he sees, is bigger than he is; and there the 
altruistic spirit begins to show itself. The social 
spirit is now very strong, and forms all manners 
the sexes beginning to diverge, and the boys do not 
want to play with the girls; they call the girls 
"Sissy," and the girls say the boys are "Nasty," 
and they part. Later on you will find the social 
altruistic spirit continuing, but when these boys and 
of clubs. But now in this period you will find 
girls reach the age of adolescence, you will find 
they converge again ; and now the boy is happy if 



76 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

a girl will let him see her home, and the girl is 
proud if the boy is willing. Unquestionably those 
are true developments in child nature, and unques- 
tionably in our handling of these developing young 
people we must work along the lines that God has 
marked out in their nature. Especially is this true 
when we come to that period which is called the 
adolescent period, when larger destinies are now 
being shaped and momentous events are on the 
threshold. Those are the hard times, when they 
begin to pair off, and instead of coming to Sunday 
School, go on the boulevard or down to Coney 
Island. There we must watch. One of the grandest 
things that they ever said against the mission to 
which I ministered years ago, which they intended 
to be a sting, was this — the Olivet Chapel was 
a marriage instituticn — Heiraths-Anstalt, they 
said in German; I replied from the pulpit I was 
glad that it was so ; for I had rather have the young 
people court in, and marry from, the church than 
from the sidewalk and the ball-room. It is a grand 
thing when our Sunday Schools become not only 
educational but matrimonial institutions ; and satu- 
rated with the spirit of the Master, start the young 
couples out along the line of their life experiences 
with the blessing of the church upon them. 

From this child-study we learn that while each 
child is different from every other child, all children 
have certain characteristics in common. No two 
leaves in the forest are exactly alike, yet every 
maple leaf in the forest has similarity with every 



WHOM WE TEACH. 77 

other maple leaf. So with the children. I want 
to mention now eight characteristics which prevail 
everywhere among- children, which we must under- 
stand and make use of if we are to rightly use the 
material that God has placed in our care and 
handle rightly those whom we teach. 

First : Childhood is plastic. When we grow old 
we become crystallized, and we cannot change with- 
out breakage or cleavage. The child is like the soft 
clay in the hands of the moulder, and almost any- 
thing that the teacher desires to make he can secure. 
That children are plastic is very evident from ex- 
periences through which we pass. A good class 
may be moulded with marvelous rapidity along 
faulty lines by the implanting of a thoroughly 
vicious boy into that class. See how the rest will 
answer to his vicious touch — how he will contami- 
nate and deform other boys there. That is enough 
to show that children are plastic, for evil as well 
as for good. 

Second : Children are imitative. Therefore, with 
all the more care should we walk before them, for 
they will imitate us, without any question. If a 
Sunday School teacher be late systematically, the 
children will imitate her. If the Sunday School 
teacher be given to peculiar care in the matter of 
dress, the scholars will imitate the teacher. Whatever 
the teacher does the scholars tend to reproduce, and 
sometimes to absurd extremes. My brother was 
drilling a young fellow one time for a recitation in 
a pathetic piece. Judge of his surprise when on 



78 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

the festive occasion the boy, just at the point of 
greatest pathos, drew out his handkerchief and blew 
a blast like a trombone. The whole thing was 
ruined. When afterwards my brother said to him, 
"Why ever did you do that?" he replied, "Why, 
don't you remember when you were reciting this 
piece for me you blew your nose just at that point?" 

In the third place : Children are retentive. Their 
memories are sticky while ours are slippery. They 
hold so little to begin with that they are eager to 
hold more, and you toss a fact into a boy's memory 
and he holds it. That is one of the most encour- 
aging things, and we want to realize that their 
memories not only are quick to receive but are 
tenacious to retain. In their old age, when they 
forget the events of the recent past, they hold to 
the events of childhood with a grip of steel. Thus 
the truth implanted in a child's mind, though the 
child may wander away in maturer years far from 
the pathway, remains there, and it may be that 
by God's grace a fact given to the child in his 
early years will be the means of his salvation in 
the far-off country where he is hungering and 
starving among the swine. Joyful fact, therefore, 
that all children by nature are retentive of facts 
given to them. 

Fourth : Children are mercurial. By that I mean 
that they are not long in one state. A German 
philosopher can evolve ideas out of his inner con- 
sciousness in the dark for two hours at a time, but 
a boy cannot. A boy is like a grasshopper ; he 



WHOM W£ TKACH. 79 

jumps and leaps and jumps again, and you never 
quite know where he started from or where he is 
going to land. But he is made that way and you 
can't change him, and, therefore, you have to be 
content to jump with him, if you can; and blessed 
is that teacher who is agile enough to go over the 
field with his boy and never lose sight of him. 
Why, boys and girls sometimes do two or three 
things at once, which is more than some of us can 
do. I was once preaching on the Sunday School 
lesson some weeks ahead. At the close of the serv- 
ice the teacher came to me and said, "What shall 
I do with Charlie?" Said I, "What is the matter?" 
"W T hy," she said, "While you were preaching he 
took apart and put together every link in his gutta- 
percha watch chain." "Well," I said, "I am sorry, 
but I can't help it." Weeks after we came to that 
lesson, and lo and behold, Charlie knew it. The 
teacher said, "Charlie, I am glad you have studied 
the lesson." "I haven't studied it," he said. "Why, 
how did you know it?" she replied. "Oh," he said, 
"Old Schauffler preached about that six weeks ago." 
He could listen and perform tricks with his watch 
chain at the same time. 

That is one of our troubles with these children — 
they are too quick for us. We have slowed up, 
and they have got a full head of steam on all the 
time. I was in the round house of a railroad in 
New York some time ago, and I saw this notice: 
"No engineer allowed to take his engine out of this 
round house with less than 120 pounds of steam on." 



80 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

I thought, "That's fine. I think I will put up a 
notice in my Sunday School: 'No teacher allowed 
to go to her class with less than 120 pounds of 
steam on/ " because the boys never come with 
less than 120 pounds of steam. There is always a 
teacher in every class : If the official teacher is not 
there there is a self-appointed teacher there. The 
lesson taught is not always the International. If 
Barnum has been round a lesson will be taught on 
gymnastics, elephants, tigers ; and it will be well 
taught, with nerve and power and imagination and 
faith. Sometimes I notice there are two teachers 
in the same class : One is the official teacher and 
the other is the real teacher, and the real teacher 
generally holds the right of way, because he carries 
120 pounds. How do you expect to handle these 
children if you come to them with your boilers cold 
and your furnaces out and they come with their 
furnaces white-hot and the boiler bursting? 

That's the trouble — they are so quick they fairly 
take our breath away sometimes. A lady in Boston 
told me, to show how smart Boston boys were, that 
a Boston boy was asked to give the parts of the 
verb Go; and he said, "Go — went — got there." I 
brought that back to New York and told my brother, 
who is one of the superintendents of public schools 
in New York. Said I, "See how smart the Boston 
boys are." "Pooh," he responded, "That's nothing." 
Said he, "A New York boy was asked to compare 
the adjective sick, and he said, 'Sick — worse — 
dead.' " 



WHOM WE T^ACH. 81 

Really that is charming, but, brothers, we have 
got to get up in the early morning to keep up with 
that procession. Prof. George Adam Smith, of 
Glasgow, told me two years ago, when he was in 
this country, of an incident in New Haven. A Pro- 
fessor of Psychology in Yale had a habit of pounc- 
ing on children and asking them some absurd ques- 
tion just to see how long it would take the child 
to pull itself together and give some kind of an 
answer. They were on the street together, and the 
psychological professor pounced on a newsboy, and 
says, "Sonny, what time is it by your nose?" And 
the boy answered, "Mine ain't runnin' — is yours?" 
I guess that will do for this type. All I wanted was 
to illustrate a fundamental fact, that childhood is 
mercurial and swift. 

Oh, but some one says, "You don't know my 
Sunday School scholars. I have got a stupid lot." 
And then I am reminded of the criticism of some 
secular educators, who are never tired of throwing 
stones at us Sunday School workers and giving 
us all kinds of illustrations of absurd replies that 
Sunday School scholars give. Now, they cannot 
teach us anything about that. We know more about 
that, painfully, than they do. But this I will say: 
For every blockhead reply that you will get out of a 
Sunday School scholar, I will produce an equally 
blockhead answer from a day school scholar, and 
the reason I can do it, is because my brother is one 
of the superintendents in New York and he gives 
me a select assortment. And yet they have five 



82 pastoraIv leadership. 

days a week and five hours a day, and we have 
one day a week and half an hour for teaching. 
Do our scholars make stupid answers ? Yes. Partly 
because they have got stupid teachers. But even if 
they have not, they give stupid answers. But did 
you ever hear anything worse than this, from a 
grammar school in New York? The girls in the 
highest class — I am ashamed to tell this in Louis- 
ville — were asked to write a composition on the 
human body, and this is what one of them wrote: 

"The human body is composed of three parts — the 
head, the thorax, and the bowels. The head is that 
with which we think ; the thorax has the heart, the 
lungs and the liver. The bowels are five — A, E, 
I, O, U." 

When you hear any secular educator throw stones 
at the Sunday School, throw that at him. 

Fifth: Children are affectionate. Blessed char- 
acteristic! For where force can do little, love is 
omnipotent ; and the child naturally turns with love 
towards its teacher if its teacher is human. A 
child in joining a church in New York was asked, 
"What led you to Christ?" And her reply was, 
"First I loved my teacher, and then I loved my 
teacher's Bible, and then I loved my teacher's 
Saviour." Blessed pathway of love! That must 
be an exceedingly unlovely teacher who cannot win 
the love of the child. I pity anyone if the child 
does not turn toward that one with trust and affec- 
tion. Anywhere excepting among the very wealthy, 
where children are pitifully blase, you can win the 



WHOM WK TEACH. 83 

children around yourself and have them twine 
around you as the tendrils of a creeper twine around 
the oak, and thus with God's blessing, can lead them 
wherever you desire, and be to them a support and 
a stay while they need it, and remain in their memo- 
ries after they need you no longer, as sweet perfume 
remains in a rose garden after sun down. 

Sixth: Children are imaginative. And there is 
one of our strong points. To the child a few marks 
on a piece of paper or a blackboard mean a great 
deal. A child loves to "Make believe/' and you 
put five round discs on the board or on a block of 
paper in your class, and two little straight marks, 
and say, "Here are the five loaves of the boy and 
these are the two fishes," and the child's imagina- 
tion gets to work and fairly transforms those pencil 
marks so that they become loaves and fishes. The 
child gets the chairs in its mother's parlor in a 
line and they are the twentieth century express, 
the armchair at the head being the locomotive. It 
does not move an inch really, but it Hies to the child. 
It is wondrous ! 

I heard a story of a boy who with his sister had 
got all the chairs in the parlor in a line, and was 
playing Empire State Express. A lady came in. 
There was no place to sit down and she says, 
"What are you doing?" "Oh," he says, "This is 
the Empire State, and I am engineer and sister, 
she's conductor." And the lady, a stranger, said, 
"I will be a passenger," and she sat down in one of 
the chairs. The boy didn't like it, and he said, 



84 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

"Where are you going?" She said, "I am going to 
Albany." "Well," he said, "this is Albany." 

Seventh: Children are just. One of the earliest 
things you will hear a child say in its play with the 
others is, "It ain't fair." They have a keen sense 
of right, and if we deal with them unjustly they 
resent it, and they resent it rightly. In all our deal- 
ing with them in family or in school we must re- 
member that early development of the desire for 
marked justice and that resentment against all par- 
tiality and all semblance of unfairness. How keen 
they are to see whether they are justly treated is 
apparent from an experience of my own in Sunday 
School. 

We were accustomed at one time for very high 
grade work in written examinations, and other 
requisitions, to give a prize of the value of $5.00 at 
the end of the year. The work that was required 
was very stiff and the prize was large. A boy 
chose a couple of volumes as his prize and they 
were given to him as a $5.00 prize. The boy was 
only fourteen years old, and a tenement house child. 
The next day he put those two volumes under his 
arm and he went up to Scribner's and he said, 
"What do these volumes cost?" (He knew some- 
thing about rebates and percentages.) They said, 
"Seven dollars and a half." Then our stock went 
away above par, because he had thought that we 
bought those volumes at less than $5.00, getting the 
per cent off, and palmed them off on him as $5.00 
worth. But when he found he would have had to 



WHOM WE) TEACH. 85 

pay $7.50, and that we gave him the full benefit 
of the rebate, he trumpeted our fame from one end 
of the city ward to the other. We dealt with him 
fairly. Down to zero my humble stock would have 
gone as superintendent if he had found that I paid 
$3.50 for those books and palmed them off as $5.00 
books. We want, therefore, to deal with them along 
the line of that innate sense of justice that children 
have, and impress it on our teachers that they fol- 
low that line closely. 

Finally: Children are heroic. Here again we 
make a dire mistake, thinking that true -heroism is 
a characteristic that develops late in life and that we 
cannot expect heroism from children. Not so. Tell 
me, was David the boy more heroic or less heroic 
than David the man ? I say David the boy was the 
grander of the two. David the boy risked his life 
with lion and bear and giant, and David the man 
fell, in the case of Uriah and Bathsheba. Tell me, 
was Daniel the boy any less heroic, when he de- 
clined to be defiled with the king's meat, than Daniel 
the man when he walked into the lions' den rather 
than cease his prayer? Wasn't the boy just as grand 
as the man? 

Oh, when a child sees its line of duty and makes 
up its mind to follow it, it will follow it more 
straightly than in later years, because a child is less 
politic. A man sees his line of duty and then be- 
gins to say, "If I follow it, what will its effects be 
on my business?" A woman sees her line of duty 
and begins to say, "If I accept it how will it affect 



86 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

my position in society?" Ulterior motives, side in- 
terests, begin to confuse our vision and to make 
our walk somewhat unstable. But when a child 
sees its duty, irrespective of what others think, the 
child will be more prone to do and dare, and die 
if need be, than the adult. 

A boy in my Sunday School one time, about fif- 
teen years of age, the son of a liquor dealer, came 
to me and he said "Father says that I have got to 
serve the bar now on Sundays. What will I do?" 
I said "My boy, what do you think you ought to 
do?" He -said "I ought not to serve." "Well," I 
said, "I have nothing to say to you." Then he said 
"But father says if I don't serve the bar on Sundays 
I can pack and get out. What do you think I ought 
to do?" I said "What do you think you ought to 
do?" He said "I ought to pack and get out." "Very 
well," I said, "I have nothing to say to you except- 
ing, when your father asks you to serve his bar you 
answer respectfully, and say 'Father, I will do any- 
thing for you that is not contrary to the laws of God 
and man, but that is contrary to both.' " I never told 
the boy I would care for him ; I simply threw him 
back on his own sense of duty. The next Sunday 
the command came to serve the bar, and the sug- 
gested reply came. The boy's father lost his temper 
and angrily said "Then, march," so my boy put up 
all that he had in a red handkerchief and marched 
out into the streets of New York, with no place 
to sleep and nothing to eat. Now I say that that 
was grander faith in God than the faith of Abra- 



WHOM WE TEACH. 87 

ham when God told him to go out into a land that 
he knew not ; for Abraham went with his flocks 
and herds, and my boy had not a single mutton 
chop or a single place to sleep in. So he marched. 

I have seen many a case, not quite as strong as 
that perhaps, but which nevertheless illustrates the 
heroism of these children when they see the line 
of duty and dare to follow it in the midst of perse- 
cution and contumely and ridicule on the part of 
others in the shops, in the home, or in the social 
circle. Let us make no mistake, therefore, in think- 
ing that the child cannot stand for duty as well as 
the man; for both stand because God helps them, 
and the child stands perhaps a little more heroically 
because he a little more absolutely trusts his 
Heavenly Father's guidance. 

See, then, whom we teach. Is it not charming? 
Is there anything better? Is there anything more 
attractive? Is there any work more remunerative? 
We have God's Word to teach. We have God's 
child to whom to teach this Word. What could we 
ask more? As to the further blessings along the 
line of our work, we shall deal with these to-mor- 
row, when we speak of "Why we teach," and later 
dwell on "The Adjuncts God gives us in all this." 



LECTURE IV. 

WHY WE TEACH. 

Mr. Chairman and my beloved Christian 
friends : — The lateness of the hour last evening 
obliged me to close the lecture before I had quite 
closed the theme. For the sake of a little more com- 
pleteness, we must therefore recur to our theme of 
last evening before passing on to the specific theme 
for to-night. 

In the consideration of Whom we Teach, we want 
to remember that we have to regard not only the 
nature of the scholar, younger or older, but the 
environment of the scholar. Nature is much ; envi- 
ronment, however, is also potent. We must know, 
concerning our scholar, his environment in his 
home, in order that we may minister rightly to 
his spiritual wants. It is a matter of no small 
importance to me if I know that one of my boys 
comes from a drunkard's home. To him with pe- 
culiar sympathy my heart opens up, and for him 
with peculiar fervor my prayers ascend. It is well 
for me to know whether my scholar comes from 
an irreligious home, where the voice of prayer and 
the example of prayer are never heard or set. I shall 
the more wisely minister to him when I know these 
facts in the home life. It is a matter of vital import 
to me to realize that my scholar comes from a home 



WHY WE TEACH. 89 

where there is great poverty, and where sometimes 
it is difficult to find the wherewithal to meet, not 
luxuries but necessities of life. All along the line 
the environment of my child in his home is a matter 
of supreme importance to me, so that I may min- 
ister to him in accordance with his wants, his defi- 
ciencies, possibly even his redundancies. 

Futhermore, in order rightly to minister to these 
under our care we must know their environment 
in their places of business. If my boy is in a brok- 
er's office, where the boys are allowed free access 
to the stamp-box, I should know it; for there are 
advertisements appearing in our daily papers for 
all manner of things, pure and impure, and they 
say, "Inclose stamps." Many a boy having access 
to his employer's stamp-box for the legitimate pur- 
pose of correspondence, has gone beyond legitimacy, 
and has appropriated that which did not belong to 
him, for the sake of purchasing advertised articles. 
The temptation is in the boy's way, and knowing 
it, I may be able to stem the tide of temptation be- 
fore it becomes a torrent. 

It is a matter of superlative importance to me 
to know what kind of a department store my young 
Sunday School girl is working in. I had at one 
time in my school a most charming girl working 
in a large department store behind the lace counter, 
and she told me that men came to purchase lace, 
engaged her in conversation, purchased lace and 
then attempted to present it to her, asking her to 
go with them to places of amusement. These were 



90 PASTORAI, I^ADEJRSHIP. 

laying traps for unwary feet to stumble over. If 
I know that my girls have such places of temptation, 
I shall minister to them better, shall I not, than if 
I am teaching in darkness? The environment of 
my scholar, whether in home or business or public 
school, or on that largest of all academies — the pub- 
lic street, is a matter of great importance, if I would 
be a teacher rightly dividing the word of truth. The 
physician who desires to minister wisely to his pa- 
tient ascertains every detail of ancestry and envi- 
ronment. Following his example, he who is spirit- 
ual physician must endeavor to inform himself all 
along the line, so that wherever opportunity offers 
he may be a friend in need, and thus a friend indeed. 
Not only this, but we must enter into the minuter 
details of our scholars' lives, and that particularly 
in cases where they do not live in Christian homes. 
It is a matter of importance to me to know whether 
my children pray. And not that only, but whether 
they pray morning or night ; for there be many 
that pray at night but not in the morning ; and yet 
as they face the day they face the temptation, and 
if they must pray morning or night, I say pray in 
the morning. It is helpful to me to know not only 
whether they pray, but whether they pray before 
they get into bed or after they get into bed. For he 
who prays wearied, after he gets into bed, tends 
to drop asleep as he is praying. A Sunday School 
teacher in New York, hearing me say this, said, 
as I was afterwards informed, "That is refining it 
too far. I don't believe my scholars pray after they 



WHY WE TEACH. 91 

get into bed." She had ten scholars. She made the 
inquiry the following Sunday and found that six 
of them prayed after they got into bed. 

Once more, it is well for me to know whether 
my scholars pray a memorized prayer or pray out 
of their own hearts ; for memorized prayer is more 
apt to become formalistic. I was once in the home 
of the mother of one of our Sunday School scholars, 
and I said to her, "Does your little child pray?" 
"Surely," she said. "Mary, kneel down and say 
your prayer." Instantly down on the floor the five- 
year-older knelt, put up her hands, and this is what 
she said: " O Thou with more than the strength 
of an earthly father and more than the tenderness 
of an earthly mother, look down upon us Thy crea- 
tures, we beseech Thee, and vouchsafe unto us Thy 
benediction and grace. Amen." Five years old! 
Was it not of importance for me to know that, and 
to say to the mother, "There is a better prayer than 
that. 'Now I lay me down to sleep.' Or "Jesus, 
tender Shepherd, hear me. Bless thy little lamb 
to-night." 

Finally, on this point : It is important for us to 
know the peculiar temperament of our scholars; 
for some can be reached in one way and some in 
another. One member of my Sunday School was 
to me a thorn in the flesh. He was always making 
fun. He was always on the edge of violent dis- 
turbance in school and prayer meeting, and more 
than once or twice I have had to say to him, 
"George, go out." I never could touch him. A 



92 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

lady discerned that George had a poetic tendency, 
because he was always getting off little bits of songs 
and negro minstrel jingles. She invited him to 
her house, and said, "George, I would like to read 
you something," and she read to him a little from 
Milton's Paradise Lost. "My!" he said, "that's fine." 
Where did you get that?" "Oh," she said "that is 
in a book called Milton's Paradise Lost." "I wish 
I could get it," he said. Just at that time I was 
renewing the Sunday School library, and George 
came to me and said, "I want you to promise me 
one thing." I said, "Well, first what is it?" He 
said, "I want you to promise to put a certain book 
into that library." Still cautious, I said, "What 
book?" for I thought he might want "Jim Biudsoe, 
the Rampaging Tiger of the Western Prairie." He 
said, "I want you to put in Milton's Paradise Lost." 
Then you could have knocked me down with a fea- 
ther ! "Yes," I said, and Paradise Regained, and 
the whole of them." "Now, one thing thing more," 
he said, "I want you to promise me to give me the 
first shot at the book when it comes in." "Cer- 
tainly," said I. 

That was the beginning. The end of it was his 
conversion and his union with the church of Jesus 
Christ — all because she discerned his tender spot, 
and touched it, and he quivered. 

Thus if we study those whom we teach we shall 
find vastly more success, and our work vastly more 
remunerative than it ever has been. 

So far we have been dealing with matters that 



WHY WE TEACH. 93 

are in the Holy Place. Now we advance a step 
and enter the Most Holy Place, and as we come 
to this matter of "Why we Teach" I am reminded 
of the command of Jehovah to Moses when at the 
burning bush He said, "Take off thy shoes from 
off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest 
is holy ground." Now we draw near to the very 
heart of the whole question of Sunday School work. 
Why do we teach in Sunday School at all ? Is it in 
order that we may make clear the geography of Bi- 
ble lands ? Yes — partly. Is it in order that we may 
teach the history of God's ancient people? Yes — 
partly. Is it that we may set forth the habits and 
customs of the Orientals? Yes — partly. But all 
those three put together are only a drop in the 
bucket, compared with that larger benediction that 
we have to offer our scholars, in that we are aiming 
at their spiritual regeneration ; at that which is 
fundamental in life, both for time and for eternity. 
If we teach rightly, we teach so that three great 
truths may appear in our teaching and fasten on 
the hearts and on the minds of our scholars. The 
first of these is that fundamental truth which ap- 
pears early in the Word of God and never disap- 
pears even to the last volume of Sacred Writ — 
Guilt — man's guilt. Not man's incompleteness — 
not man's ignorance — not man's mistakes ; but man's 
guilt before God. 

And here I am reminded that at once some one 
may ask, with regard especially to the younger 
scholars, "Do vou believe that these little ones are 



94 pastoral leadership. 

sinners before God?" It is customary in conven- 
tions to call the primary class, our class of "little 
lambs." A minister, once said, "Don't call them 
little lambs ; call them little wolves." Was he right 
or was he wrong? It rather jars upon our conven- 
tional conception of these little ones. Are they 
lambs or are they wolves? 

This much is certain : All the wolves of to-day 
were once little children. All the jail-house oc- 
cupants of to-day were once prattling little ones. 
This much is also certain: All the great saints of 
to-day were once primary scholars. Wolves, or 
lambs, are they? Neither, exactly. Possible 
wolves? Yes. Possible lambs? Yes. There is 
the potentiality of the wolf in the child, and there 
is the potentiality of the lamb in the child. There 
is a possible demon in the child, and there is a 
possible saint in the child. So that when we face 
the little ones as well as the older ones, we are fac- 
ing boundless possibilities upward and boundless 
possibilities downward. 

Therefore I say that we must teach what you 
see I have put on the board (Guilt) as one of the 
fundamental teachings of the Word of God; for, 
if the little ones understand, as we saw last evening, 
so soon what it is to be fair and not to be fair, they 
also can understand the shame of unfairness and 
the merit of justice. More speedily than we com- 
prehend, the little conscience is awakened. Not 
to the measure of the conscience of the adult — that 
God does not expect ; but there is that in the child 



WHY WB TKACH. 95 

which soon will respond to the feeling, "It wasn't 
right — it wasn't right." He teaches safely who 
teaches nearest along the line of God's revelation; 
for God knows the human heart of the child as well 
as of the adult. 

We teach, however, not to produce the con- 
sciousness of guilt for its own sake, but for the sake 
of its cure; and therefore the second great truth 
on which we place emphasis in the striving to bring 
these little ones and the older ones forward in their 
spiritual life, is — Grace, 

Whose grace ? The grace of God in Jesus Christ. 
Man's guilt, ill deserving — God's grace, ever 
abounding. And we try to make these scholars of 
ours understand that this grace, which really is 
undeserved, is offered to them without money and 
without price, and that the grace of God received 
into their hearts transforms their lives by the re- 
newing of their minds, so that they may prove what 
is that holy and acceptable and perfect will of God. 

That grace we exalt, and strive by divine help 
to have incorporated into the life of the scholar, 
in order that something else may appear. The 
word I am now putting on the board is "Glory." 
The glory of the divine character, implanted, de- 
veloped, completed. The impartation of the divine 
nature, which, beginning now in germ form, more 
and more dominates the life, until at last, through 
the boundless grace and power of God, all that sin 
wrought is undone, and through the second Adam 
the misery of the first Adam is remedied, and we 



96 PASTORAIv I^ADERSHIP. 

appear a* sons of God in his presence at last, per- 
fect. For "though it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be, we know that when he shall appear we 
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." 

See then why we teach — that the scholar may 
be freed from the bondage and power of guilt ; that 
the scholar may have implanted the new life, and 
that that new life may develop until at last it has 
assumed perfectness. Oh, the blessedness of it, 
when we understand why we teach ! Oh, the con- 
straint of it, as it restrains us from digressions on 
the one side or the other side, and holds us down to 
the vital, germinal point ! Oh, the blessedness with 
which this focalizes all our teaching, until it con- 
verges on that which God desires to have take place 
in the heart of every child of his ! 

See then how these three words stand — 



G 



UILT 
RACE 
LORY 



In this effort so to teach that Guilt may be felt, 
Grace may be accepted, and Glory implanted, we 
meet with two great facts : — the first, one of great 
encouragement, and the second somewhat discour- 
aging. 

The first — a great encouragement. All experi- 
ence and all the newer paidology teach us that the 
majority of those who are converted are converted 
while they are in their teens, the vast majority be- 
fore thev are seventeen. Charts and charts have 



WHY WE) TRACH. 



97 



been prepared illustrating this. If a child goes be- 
yond seventeen the chances are very small that he 
will be converted after that. The vast majority find 
the Saviour in those early years. 

Proof of the statement that we may expect more con- 
versions at the ages above mentioned is found in the 
numerous tables that have been made showing the ages 
of conversion of large numbers of people. These have 





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AGE OF DECISIVE RELIGIOUS AWAKENING OF 84 MEN. 



been tabulated, so as to set forth to the eye most clearly 
the results of these inquiries. They are most interesting 
and instructive. Look carefully, for example, at the 
charts that we give herewith. They are taken from "The 
Spiritual Life," by Prof. George A. Coe. One chart begins 
at the age of six, and the other at the age of seven. In 
each case notice that at the age of nine or ten there is 
quite a marked increase of conversions. Then again at 
the ages of twelve and thirteen the rise is still more 
marked. But at sixteen and seventeen years of age the 
line marking conversions rises most startlingly. After 
that age the lines in both charts fall steadily and soon 
show very few conversions at all. Charts like these (of 
7 



98 



PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 



which many have been produced by various authors, and 
all with substantially the same showing) are food for 
most serious thought. They show us how God's Spirit 
has actually worked among those whose story is thus 
recorded, and there is no reason to doubt that the same 
Spirit is willing to work in the same way in your own 
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AGE OF CONVERSION OF 272 MEMBERS OF ROCK RIVER. 



Last spring in the New York Presbytery we had 
a devotional meeting. There were present of min- 
isters and elders one hundred and twenty men. 
The theme was, What we could do more for Christ 
in our Presbytery. It was borne on my heart to 
say that I thought we could emphasize our work 
more keenly for those in Sunday School, who 
were not Christians, because of the fact that 



WHY WB TEACH. 99 

childhood was the harvest-time. I said if I dared 
I would take a vote to find how many of the men 
there were converted at or under sixteen years of 
age, but I did not dare. But one or two men rose. 
I then said, "Well, if you can, rise — any who were 
converted under sixteen," and one hundred men 
rose to their feet. They looked at each other with 
astonishment, for none had realized how great was 
the harvest in our presbytery from the childhood 
of forty or fifty years ago. In another public Sun- 
day School meeting we took the same vote. There 
were three of us ministers on the platform, and I 
turned to one and said, "How old were you when 
you were converted ?" He said, "Fifteen.'' I said, 
"I was fourteen." I asked the third, "How old 
were you, my brother?" and he said, "Thirteen." 
The three speakers that night were child converts. 
In a large convention in Brooklyn, where there 
were 1,500 teachers present I asked the same ques- 
tion, with the same result. But as ocular demon- 
station is always stronger than verbal statement, 
I am now going to ask all in this audience who 
were converted at or under sixteen years of age, 
please stand on your feet. 

(In response to this request a vast majority of 
the audience rose). 

Look round, brothers and sisters, and see God's 
working, and understand what this means, as we 
stand in God's presence. Take your seats, please. 
Thanks be to God, who gave us the grace as chil- 
dren to become his followers ; and thanks be to God, 

LofC. 



100 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

who by his grace has sustained us in our pilgrimage, 
and kept our eyes from tears and our feet from 
falling. This is the encouragement. Oh, can it 
be any grander? What do you ask more, fellow- 
worker? What more will you demand at God's 
hand, of privilege and opportunity, than has been 
evidenced here to-night? And the next generation 
has got to come out of these children in their teens 
of to-day, and I make no manner of doubt that it 
will come. 

That is the fact of overwhelming encouragement, 
which cheers us in our hours of despair, which 
strengthens us in our moments of weakness, and 
which confirms our faith in the hour of unbelief. 

There is a discouraging fact now that we must 
face. In New York state, with which I am most 
familiar, up till two years ago, statistics showed 
that two per cent of our Sunday School scholars 
throughout the state confessed Christ every year. 
The average life of the Sunday School scholar is 
ten years, says from six to sixteen. That would, 
at the rate of two per cent of conversions a year, 
make twenty per cent converted in our schools be- 
fore they pass out. Statistics also show that about 
twenty per cent more are converted during the 
entire balance of their lives. That is a liberal 
statement. That makes forty per cent of our 
Sunday School force brought to the Saviour, 
and that leaves sixty per cent going down to a 
Christless grave. That is a figure to make us pause 
and sigh. Since the introduction and the pushing 



WHY WE TEACH. 101 

of Decision Day in New York state the number 
of conversions in the Sunday Schools each year 
has doubled ; so that now we may say in ten years 
forty per cent of the Sunday School force con- 
fesses Christ. Twenty per cent still continuing to 
confess Christ after they leave the school, we have 
sixty per cent. Still where are the forty out of 
every one hundred? This is one of the startling 
facts. One brother this afternoon said, "Count not 
your ninety and nine so much as your one outside." 
Give thanks to God, I say, for your sixty per cent, 
but then swiftly turn your eyes toward the forty 
per cent that are still unsaved, and that, so far as 
we can judge, will remain unsaved unless we swift- 
ly go after them. 

On the other hand, when we face these difficulties 
it makes us realize that our sufficiency must be of 
God. Moreover we are greatly encouraged when we 
realize what may be the value to the world of one 
child brought into vital union with the Lord Jesus 
Christ. In Scotland many years ago an elder was 
absent from the communion service, and meeting 
a brother elder next morning, he said, "Were there 
any united with the church yesterday?" and his 
brother elder said, "Oh, nobody but wee Bobbie 
Moffatt." Wee Bobbie Moffatt? But Africa was 
yet to praise God for Robert Moffatt, and the world 
was yet to understand what wee Bobbie Moffatt, 
plus the grace of God in his heart, could accomplish 
for the Dark Continent. He, the pioneer along 
the line of darkness, was blazing the pathway here 



102 * PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

and there for more brilliant successors. But how 
little that elder thought, how little that church 
thought, of wee Bobbie Moffatt! 

How great was the blessing to the cause at large, 
when in that shoe store in Boston Dwight L. Moody 
gave his heart to the Lord, influenced by Mr. Kim- 
ball. See, there Northfield stands on the one side 
of the Connecticut River and Mt. Hermon on the 
other — Christian educational institutions, and in 
far-off Chicago that Institute for training Chris- 
tian workers ; and those would never have been 
reared had not one clerk's heart been given to the 
Lord in his teens. 

So these things encourage us again on the other 
side, and with faces expectant and with hope buoy- 
ant we turn towards our Sunday School scholars, 
realizing that by God's grace miracles shall yet be 
wrought and multitudes yet be blest. 

In this work we remember as a further encour- 
agement that a child converted is of more value 
to the world than a man converted, because the 
man's life is already largely lived and the child's 
life is yet to be lived. The child has years ahead 
of growth and usefulness ; the old, hardened sinner, 
saved by God's grace, has a black record behind 
him, and a few remaining days or months of a 
brightening progress in front of him. And so we 
praise God for this encouragement too. 

And yet in all this we may well say as we face 
the difficulty, Who is sufficient for these things? 
I can reach a child's mind without the sanctifying 



WHY WE TEACH. 103 

aid of the Holy Spirit. A godless teacher can 
teach a child geography and history from the Bible. 
I can make a child understand the syntax of the 
sentences which set forth God's grace. But to 
reach that citadel of the child's heart, and make 
the child say, "I will," is so far beyond man's power 
that it seems hopeless. Put the little one in front 
of you, and surround him with all the professors 
from theological seminaries, and let them argue 
with the child and prove to the child in a thousand 
ways the reasonableness of all this, and still that 
little sovereign says, "I won't!" Who, then, is 
sufficient for these things, to bring that child out 
of the attitude of "I won't" into the attitude of "I 
will." But just here we meet our greatest encour- 
agement, — that the Holy Spirit is with us, ready 
to be our co-worker; and if you, my younger 
brethren, remember nothing of what I have said 
but this, forget this not. Our sufficiency is of God, 
who, through the aid of his living Spirit, is able 
so to guide us and so to influence those whom we 
teach that they may pass out of death into life, out 
of darkness into light, out of bondage into liberty. 
Here are the modern miracles of grace wrought 
before our very eyes, though the process we never 
can discern, any more than the disciples could dis- 
cern the process by which five loaves were multi- 
plied and fed five thousand. But the results we 
see, and the joy is ours, and the harvest is our 
abundant reward. 

I believe that when you and I study the lesson, 



104 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

the Holy Spirit is anxious to help us. I believe 
when we go to our classes the Holy Spirit is anx- 
ious to go with us. I believe when we speak to 
our scholars the divine Spirit is anxious to speak 
through us. I believe he is more anxious to co- 
operate with us than we are to have his co-operation. 
And there lies our great comfort. I believe the 
Holy Spirit is always anxious to ascend the pulpit 
with every minister. When we are willing to teach, 
not with the words which man's wisdom teacheth 
but which the Holy Spirit teacheth, then we be- 
come endued with that mysterious power that men 
try to analyze and describe and dissect, and never 
reach, — that living power of the living God in our 
hearts. Men say, 'What was Moody's secret of 
success?" And one says, "His executive power." 
And another says, "His power of anecdote and il- 
lustration." And another says, "His common- 
sense." And another says, "His immense vitality." 
No. All these — permeated and sanctified by the 
Spirit of the living God. Then they became potent, 
and men forgot his uncouthness, they overlooked 
his grammatical errors, and they pardoned things 
which otherwise they would not have pardoned, 
because they were overwhelmed with the power of 
the truth which he was uttering. 

O minister, O teacher, remember this Co-worker 
who knows the avenues of the human heart, and 
will find the way in if it can be done; who knows 
the weakness of man's lips, and yet can make Moses 
speak so that Pharaoh shall tremble ; who can speak 



WHY WE TEACH. 105 

through Paul, whose speech was uncouth, so that 
his judges shall quiver. Let us remember that He 
stands ready to be with us, empowering us to bring 
our scholars out where we desire them to be. 

I have looked with some curiosity and interest 
and with some measure of care into this matter 
of what brings sinners out into the light. To my 
own humiliation I must say that, though it has 
pleased God to bless my work far more than I de- 
served, it has not been so much through sermons, — 
for very few sermons that I have preached have I 
ever found to have been the prime cause of con- 
version; but I have found fidelity, earnestness, fee- 
ble words given power by the divine blessing — I 
have found these so to work on human hearts that 
a great revolution has been accomplished; and I 
believe firmly that God can take a stray sentence 
honestly uttered, and a saving truth fervently stated, 
and can therewith batter down the defences of the 
human heart, and open the gate and find entrance 
for the divine truth. 

Here we meet with some anomalies. I had a 
teacher in our school who used to be a sailor — a 
godly man. He knew little of history and nothing 
of science, but he knew Jesus. He so taught his 
class that every one found the Savior and made 
public confession. By and by he came to me and 
said, "Take my class away. I am uneducated. I 
can't lead them any higher, but I have led them to 
Christ. Give me," he said, "a new class that does 
not know Christ, and I will try to lead them to 



106 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

the Shepherd." And I took away his whole class 
and put them into the hands of a more educated 
Christian, and I gave him a new class, and before 
he died every one had found the Savior. What was 
the potency in that uneducated man? Was it not 
his humble trust in Him who can sanctify whatever 
word is spoken, and his waiting on God for his 
blessing in the regeneration of the hearts of his 
scholars ? 

Our scholars now having been by God's grace 
brought into the kingdom, that is only half the work. 
See. They have acknowledged their guilt accord- 
ing to its measure, and have received God's grace, 
that has brought them pardon and salvation. But 
now must follow — Glory. Glory has but started™ 
the glory of transformation into the spirit of their 
perfect Lord. They are babes in Christ Jesus. And 
yet I find that there be many teachers who, as soon 
as the child has united with God's visible church, 
feel, "Now the thing is finished." No; now it is 
begun. Now the nurture begins, now the Christian 
training begins. Now that watch-care begins, lest 
they be ensnared again and go back into the old 
yoke of bondage. Now all that process begins 
that is to develop and uplift and enlarge and beau- 
tify and glorify the Christian character. Saved? 
Yes ; but saved for sanctification. Sanctified ? Yes ; 
but sanctified for service. This is the outcome of 
our work, beloved fellow-workers : that there may 
be service rendered in the divine kingdom, and that 
when we have come to acknowledge God as our 



WHY WE TEACH. 107 

God and Jesus as our Saviour we may then stand 
in the attitude of Isaiah, who, when he caught his 
first great vision of Jehovah and heard the voice 
saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for 
us?" promptly responded, "Here am I. Send me." 

But shall we put our children into service? 
Shall we make the boys hardly in their teens, who 
are Christians, workers ? Yes. Why not ? Among 
their fellow boys and girls. Not that I would en- 
courage a child to be pert or assuming; but why 
should not a boy who has found Christ go to 
another boy and tell him, and ask him to come? 
How was it with you? Wasn't the first impulse 
in your child-heart, when you found the Lord, to 
go to some other child? No one ever told me to 
go to anybody else when, as a boy of fourteen, I 
found Christ; but the Lord said to me, "There is 
Henry" — my only playmate. "Go to him, and ask 
him if he does not want to give his heart to Christ?" 
And I, a baby Christian, went to him and invited 
him, and God blessed the invitation and he came in. 

Oh, these children, if rightly guided, can do won- 
ders for Christ. A whole family is in a church in 
New York to-day. The father, mother and grand- 
mother never came inside of a church at one time, 
but a little boy came, and his father told me the 
boy used to come to him and say, "O father, won't 
you come? Oh, the singing and the teaching!" 
And the father always said, "Well, maybe." But 
his father told me about it afterwards, how the boy 
kept at him, "Won't you please go, father — won't 



108 PASTORAIy LEADERSHIP. 

you please?" and at last he came, and the mother 
came, and the grandmother came, and the sister 
came, and they were all converted i and the father 
is an elder in the church and the boy is a worker 
in the Sunday School, and the wife — he is married 
now — is a worker in the Sunday School. A boy 
did it, with God's blessing. Shall we make the 
children, therefore, serve? Aye; if little Samuel 
served in the temple, why should not our little 
Samuels serve in these modern days? 

These children need great care in their Christian 
training. If the care be not given in the home, all 
the more it is our joy and privilege to do it in class 
and school. They need guidance in their devo- 
tional reading; they need guidance in the manner 
of prayer — the How of it, the When of it, the What 
of it. They need all this gentle leadership; and 
responding to it, you will find that as the flower 
turns towards the sun and feels its warmth and 
power, so they turn toward Him who is the Sun of 
righteousness, and feel His power vivifying them, 
and his strength sustaining them. 

In this matter of bringing these scholars to a 
decision, Decision Day is of great value. If I were 
a teacher I would not wait for Decision Day; I 
would always be watching, praying, expecting. 
But many teachers will not; therefore we leaders 
must supplement their lack of fidelity by appointing 
Decision Days, and striving to make good the de- 
ficiency of the teacher by pushing for definite action 
on the part of the scholar. That Decision Day, 



WHY WE TEACH. 109 

however, which is rushed into without due prepara- 
tion is apt to work more injury than good. It must 
be wisely prepared for ; it must be carefully reached ; 
it must be afterwards carefully furthered. As an 
illustration of how this may be done, let me tell 
you what a minister in New York did this fall. 
He told all his teachers he was going to strike for 
decision on State Decision Day. He held a meeting 
of his teachers two weeks before, and it was my 
privilege at that time to address them on the matter 
of Child Christian Life. He also made an address, 
and then he said, "I want you all to be much in 
prayer that God may guide us by the Spirit in this 
work." "The next Sunday's lesson," he said, "is 
Joshua's Parting Address. The theme is, A Good 
Choice. Whatever you teachers do, I want you 
to emphasize the matter of Choice of God now. 
The following Sunday, the lesson is, The Cities of 
Refuge. Whatever you teachers do, I want you to 
end up by pointing to Jesus, the sinner's refuge. 
That morning, I shall preach on 'Children invited 
to Christ.' Where parents do not bring their chil- 
dren, I want you to bring those in your class, and 
sit with them. At the close of the Sunday School 
I shall come in, and I shall ask all scholars who 
want to join a class, definitely desiring in that class 
to confess Christ and be led further, to meet me 
at the close of the Sunday School." 

In that way the teacher force knew what he 
wanted — what he wanted of them, what he was 
going to do, and what he hoped would be the 



110 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

result. Large blessing followed that careful work 
of this godly man. I would therefore recommend 
the adoption in many cases of Decision Day, so 
that what teaching has been rightly given to our 
scholars may be then focalized, and we reach not 
only comprehension but decision and action for 
Christ. 

And will they stand? Well, you stood, didn't 
you, by God's grace ? And God is able to make them 
stand. Indeed I might say that it is easier for 
them to stand, on the whole, than to wait until years 
have confirmed habits of evil in their hearts and 
then to break away from those, and try to stagger 
on and still stand. My own experience with chil- 
dren has been somewhat large, and my experience 
with rescued men off the Bowery has been some- 
what large, for I began my work with rescued men 
on the Bowery. But of the two classes — those con- 
verted in mature years and those converted in child- 
hood — there is no comparison, as to which one 
furnishes the larger percentage of stable, growing 
Christians. 

See then, teacher, see then, brother minister, what 
we have reached so far: What we Teach — God's 
Book. Whom we Teach — God's child. Why we 
Teach — for the impartation of the divine nature 
to the child. Who is our Helper — the Divine 
Spirit of God. What a quartet, a divine Book, a 
divine Child, a divine Character, a divine Spirit. 
Sing out, O ye workers in and with four divine 
things, and make music ! Sing out, and begin that 



WHY WE TEACH. Ill 

song" which, commenced here in the human heart, 
shall not end until that day when the ransomed and 
redeemed of the Lord are brought home with shouts 
and with songs of thanksgiving, and when they all 
shall unite their voices with harp accompaniment, 
and sing, "Unto Him that loved us and washed 
us in His own precious blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests unto God, unto Him be glory 
forever !" Here we begin the feeble strains, grow- 
ing stronger and stronger; there the full chorus. 
God be praised for the four divine things with 
which and in which we work ; and God be magni- 
fied for the privilege of thus being co-workers 
with Himself. 



LECTURE V. 

ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 

f PLAN ^ 

READ DOWN. YOUR READ UP. 
(WORK) 

We have considered in our lectures thus far 
briefly: First, What we teach — God's Word; sec- 
ond, How we teach it — methods of making clear 
God's word; third, Whom we teach — and there we 
considered the nature of those whom we face week 
by week. Last night we considered the question, 
Why we teach ; and it seemed to us then as though 
we were approaching a kind of Holy of Holies, 
where the highest truth was pressed upon our minds 
and consciences, and the highest privilege was held 
out to us as co-workers with God. It may seem 
to some that the theme to-night is a step rather 
downward than upward in the consideration of Sun- 
day School activities. I make bold to say, however, 
that if that has been our unexpressed thought or 
opinion, we shall revise our judgment when we 
realize that in the erection of the tabernacle — the 
only building this world has ever seen of which 
God was the planning architect — it was necessary 
that Bezaleel and Aholiab should be filled with the 
Divine Spirit, in order that they might do their part 
in "cunning workmanship." Had Bezaleel and 

112 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 113 

Aholiab not done their detail work, there would 
have been no Holy of Holies in which the high 
priest could have ministered. We realize also that 
at that time everyone whose heart was stirred up 
and whose spirit made him willing brought an offer- 
ing, and all the women that were wise-hearted did 
spin with their hands, and brought that which they 
had spun, of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and 
of linen. Those high priestly garments in which 
Aaron was clad on the Day of Atonement, the gar- 
ments of beauty and glory in which he pronounced 
the high priestly benediction at the close of the Day 
of Atonement, were made by the hands of willing 
and wise-hearted women, who in this way con- 
tributed in their measure toward the worship of 
Almighty God in his sanctuary. Not that only, but 
Jehovah himself condescended to give minute direc- 
tions with regard to such apparently insignificant 
matters as the golden shovel or censer, and the 
golden tongs with which fire was taken from off the 
altar that incense might be burned in the holy place 
before the altar of incense. And lest there should 
be any mistake in all this carrying out of detail, God 
said to his servant Moses, "See that thou make it 
after the pattern shown thee in the mount." This 
makes us correct any false ideas that we may have 
had with regard to the unimportance of detail in 
connection with the study of God's Word or the 
worship of our Heavenly Father. 

We find this attention to minute detail illustrated 
not only in God's Word, but in that other volume 

8 



114 PASTORAIv LEADERSHIP. 

which he has written, God's Works. For the 
heavens declare the glory of God, just as truly as his 
Word shows his grace. And if we look at God's 
works in creation we shall find that the same care 
is bestowed upon that which is minute as upon that 
which is vast. The diatom, invisible to the naked 
eye, is clearly revealed under the microscope, and 
there we see colorings, and forms, delicate and 
beautiful, as perfect in themselves as though they 
were visible to the naked eye. In the minute, God's 
workmanship is perfect as well as in the vast. 
While the telescope reveals to as solar systems and 
stellar marvels and magnitudes, we see with the 
microscope that his workmanship in the infinitesimal 
is equally beyond reproach. The microscope shows 
perfect workmanship, and the telescope responds 
"Amen and Amen." 

So we make a great mistake if in all this prepara- 
tion for service, all this planning of our work and 
all this working of our plan, we pass over that which 
is minute and call It unimportant ; for there is no 
such thing as unimportance in the work of God, and 
there is nothing so small that it may be passed by in 
our ministering in the name of our Heavenly Father 
to his children here below. 

It seems to me that we might be reminded by the 
artist of the necessity of care in all our details of 
work. Michael Angelo was hewing out of marble 
that heroic statue of David which stands near the 
Uffizii Gallery in Florence, and as it approached 
completion he was visited by a friend in his studio. 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 115 

The friend marvelled at the strength and beauty of 
the marble statue, and congratulated the artist that 
he was nearing the close of his work. Some months 
after the friend re-visited Michael Angelo, and en- 
tering his studio was surprised to find the statue 
still there. He said, "Why, I thought that was 
nearly finished. What have you been doing?" To 
this the artist replied, "I have sharpened up here 
a little that muscle. I have toned down a little that 
contour. I have softened a little this expression." 
And the friend said, "Oh yes, but all these are 
trifles." To which the great sculptor said, "Re- 
member that trifles make perfection ; but perfection 
is no trifle." 

So in our Sunday School work trifles make per- 
fection, but perfection is no trifle. He, therefore, is 
wise who pays careful attention that nothing may 
escape him, and that in the complicated machinery 
of a school, especially a large school, there be no 
friction. The engineer on the vast ocean steamer 
pays as careful attention to the small cog wheel as 
he does to the larger parts of the machinery; for 
trouble arising with the small cog wheel may retard 
the motion of the vast machine, or possibly even 
bring disaster. 

In our work we are reminded of the close con- 
nection between cause and effect. There are in 
nature chains of links, each link being a cause and 
producing an effect, that in turn becoming a cause 
and producing another effect. If a link of the chain 
be broken continuity is lost and damage is wrought. 



116 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

The great naturalist Darwin made clear in one of 
his researches the hidden nature of many of these 
chains of cause and effect as we see them in the 
world around us. He had noticed that far away 
from English villages the heart's ease grew wild, 
but in the vicinity of villages, never, and it perplexed 
him to know why. Careful investigation showed 
the following : In English villages there are always 
many dogs, and they are allowed to run at large. 
Where dogs run at large cats must stay at home. 
Where cats stay at home, field mice abound. Where 
field mice abound, bumble bee nests are destroyed. 
Where bumble bee nests are destroyed, there is no 
fertilization of pollen. Ergo, dogs — no heart's ease. 
Instructive, is it not? 

And are there links in chains of cause and effect 
in nature and none in grace? Does not God work 
substantially along the same general lines, whether 
it be in the spiritual realm or in the physical realm ? 
Is he not the same God, and may we not look for 
the same manifestations of law according to the 
sphere in which we seek for them ? There is, there- 
fore, we may say, great need for us to see that the 
chain of links is complete, and that no damage is 
wrought because of a broken link, which escapes our 
attention because we have not carefully looked for it. 

Take now, for example, as one of the details in 
Sunday School work: the co-operation of the four 
main workers, namely, the teacher, the superin- 
tendent, the pastor, and the parent. Where these 
co-operate rightly the Sunday School chariot finds 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 117 

no hill of difficulty that it will not easily surmount ; 
for a four-in-hand team, pulling together, is grandly 
potent. But if you have a four-in-hand team and 
the leaders balk, the whole team is brought to a 
standstill; or if the pole horses will not do their 
work aright, too much work is thrown on the lead- 
ers, and if the journey be long they suffer. That is 
the ideal condition, for example, in a Sunday School, 
where the teacher in her class is doing her best, and 
the superintendent from the platform is backing her 
up to his utmost of power ; where the two are look- 
ing to their pastor, feeling his sympathetic throb 
and stimulated by his intelligent leadership; and 
where the three know that in the home there is 
father and mother, anxious that they should do their 
best for the boy, and willing to second their every 
effort for the spiritual illumination of the child. 
Where that co-operation does not exist it should be 
aimed for by every means in our power, continu- 
ously, wisely, patiently, lovingly, so as to bring the 
four into line. Then the thrill of power will be felt 
in our Sunday Schools, and there will be none to 
undo that which the others are striving to accom- 
plish. That this may be secured demands much 
work, demands much wisdom, demands large grace. 
That this ever can be perfectly accomplished of 
course will never be affirmed, while men are sinful 
and hearts are marble ; but because we cannot per- 
fectly accomplish it, is no reason why we should 
not do our utmost in that line. We should do our 
best to make the ideal real, and to materialize that 



118 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

which we have conceived as the perfect plan in our 
minds. 

Another of these illustrations of how, if a link be 
broken, the whole machinery suffers, may be found 
in the matter of music. "What is the best music 
book?" is often asked of Sunday School leaders. 
There is no best music book, for all classes. There 
are some that are good for no classes, and alas! 
some of those I find in use. For a home Sunday 
School, for example, where children are accustomed 
to the better grades of music, we may very well 
take some of the higher grade Sunday School books, 
which I shall not mention even, for fear of criticism. 
But there are books that conform themselves to the 
English type of music, the Barnaby and Sullivan 
style of composition, which musically is charming — 
charming because of its beautiful harmony, charm- 
ing because of its dignity, charming because of its 
being musically married to certain dignified words. 
But that is not the best book for all classes, because 
those who are musically not as highly strung or as 
perfectly educated, cannot understand that type of 
music, and we must grade ourselves down to their 
comprehension. There is good music that is 
sublimely simple, as well as good music that is 
somewhat ornate. Our music must be graded, there- 
fore, to the comprehension, musically, of those to 
whom we minister. That is not at all to say that 
some of this rag-time modern Sunday School music 
should ever be countenanced anywhere. There is 
much music in these days that is caught from the 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 119 

minstrel type and the baser secular types, and 
that ought forever to be banished from our Sunday 
Schools. 

In the matter of words, we are told to sing with 
the spirit and with the understanding. Music is 
the wings — the words are the body. The music is 
only to lift the body as expressed in the words, 
heavenward. Therefore, if one or the other be the 
more important, it is the words and not the music. 
If the words be worthy and the music match the 
words, then we have a prodigious power with our 
scholars ; for whether they remember the Golden 
Text or no, and whether they remember the lesson 
story or no, certain grand hymns may be sung into 
their hearts so deep that nothing but death will 
ever eradicate the words and the music. But in 
order that here we may have our best work, we 
must make our scholars sing with the understand- 
ing as well as with their voices, and we who are 
adults and understand the symbolism and the figura- 
tiveness of our hymns fail to realize how the 
children cannot grasp them. The hymn is given 
out and is sung, and we think they have understood 
it, but they have misunderstood it or have failed 
utterly to grasp its meaning. 

I must illustrate. We sing, "Nearer, My God, 
to Thee," and then we go on and say, "Though 
like a wanderer, the sun gone down, darkness be 
over me, my rest a stone; yet in my dreams I'd be, 
nearer, my God, to Thee." What do they under- 
stand of that — "My rest a stone?" It conveys no 



120 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP 

meaning unless the scholars have been told the story 
of Jacob to illustrate verse 2 of "Nearer, My God, 
to Thee." 

We sing, "Here I raise my Ebenezer," and when 
I was a boy I used to wonder what an Ebenezer 
was. Nobody explained it to me. I might have 
understood it if they had told me the story illus- 
trating what Ebenezer means ; then when I sang it, 
if I were disposed, I could put my understanding 
into the singing and express something intelligible, 
God-ward. 

We sing, "From every stormy wind that blows; 
from every swelling tide of woes ; there is a calm, a 
sure retreat; 'tis found beneath the Mercy Seat," 
and the scholar thinks of a seat, and of crawling 
under the seat somehow to get away from some- 
thing. I am not illustrating in this way to make 
fun at all; I am illustrating for the dear children, 
that when we come to worship Almighty God in 
song, we may intelligently help them, that they may 
truly express their thoughts, their desires, their aspi- 
rations, if they have them in their hearts. But you 
might as well sing in Choctaw as sing many of 
these hymns that are so figurative. To us they are 
clear — to them absolutely vague. We have some- 
times in our school, before we sang the hymn, read 
it responsively. Then the superintendent has ex- 
plained in the hymn the difficult passages. Then he 
has said, "Now, we understand it; now we will 
sing it," and you would be quite surprised to see 
how a hymn sung in that way assumes all of a 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 121 

sudden an indefinable something of reality in the 
school which it never had before. 

We want to realize the importance of this, be- 
cause, as I said, these hymns are imbedded in 
memories ; and on sick bed, and in storms at sea, in 
lonely hours, and in days of wandering in a far 
country sometimes these hymns are God's messen- 
gers to his wayward child; and the song, coming 
out of the far past, begins to woo him back toward 
better things which he had abandoned, and which 
possibly for years he had forgotten. I would, there- 
fore, urge as one of the adjuncts in our work the 
careful selection of the best hymns, the singing of 
them repeatedly, the explanation of them lucidly; 
so that music may be an adjunct in the impressing 
of God's Word on the hearts of our scholars. 

And here in this matter of music we want to 
see to it that there shall be some measure of variety. 
Responsive singing and the use of solos is to be com- 
mended. I am none of those who would advocate 
ornate solos. Much of our church music is sad in 
these days; much of it, I believe, is not the praise 
of Almighty God. I know not how you stand here 
in this beloved Southland, but I know well how we 
stand in New York. We were worse off years ago, 
but we are not where we should be, and too many 
church committees engage quartets, asking merely, 
"What is the quality of the voice?" and not caring 
about the quality of character on the part of the 
singer. I have heard a Jew in a Presbyterian 
church sing, "In the Cross of Christ I glory," and 



122 PASTORAL RELATIONSHIP. 

when they dismissed him for another cause, he 
came to me and said, "Do you know why they dis- 
missed me?" I said, "No, I do not." He said, "Is 
there any reason why I, as a Jew, should not sing 
in that church?" I replied, "Yes, there is." "Tell 
me," he said. "Why?" I rejoined, "You don't be- 
lieve in Jesus, and yet you sing, 'In the Cross of 
Christ I Glory.'" "Why," he said, "You don't 
understand us artists. We put ourselves for the 
time being into the spirit of what we sing." "Yes," 
I said, "And if you were to sing a hymn to Isis and 
Osiris, and began, 'O Isis and Osiris, what pure 
pleasures — ' you would put yourself into the idolatry 
of Egypt." "Certainly I would," he said. And 
that was one of the paid officials in the service of 
God in the Presbyterian Church to which I have 
alluded ! These are sad things. This is the prosti- 
tution of the praise of God, and is the abuse of 
music in the sanctuary of the Most High. 

But there is less danger of our abusing music in 
the Sunday School, and, therefore, we can pass on 
after merely calling your careful attention to the 
marvelous power there is in music in supplementing 
the work of the teacher. 

Then there is the question of the library. If we 
are to have any library, we ought to have a good 
one. As to what is a good library opinions differ, 
but as good a library as we think we can get for our 
school should be had. There is no use in our putting 
books on the shelves that the children will not read ; 
it is a waste of monev. How can we find out what 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 123 

the children will read? Only by experimentation 
— by finding out their tastes, and as far as it is 
right, ministering to those tastes; and further, by 
cultivating those tastes from a lower to a higher 
level. But there is much blind work done here, so 
that the Sunday School library is an offense fre- 
quently to the scholars and they will not go to it. 
They rather despise it. When I first began mission 
work in New York I found that a library that we 
had there was not being used at all. I thought the 
cause was the sinful nature of the people's hearts. 
When I had time I investigated the library. The 
first book I pulled out was "Charnock on the Divine 
Attributes," and I thought that rather hard. The 
second book I pulled out was "Edwards on the 
Will." Then I understood why the books were 
never called for. Then I guessed that probably 
some good Presbyterian elder up town had found it 
popular to have Charnock and Edwards in his library 
and had bought them as being proper to have, and 
had found them dry as dust. Happy thought ! Ship 
them off to the mission ! And then they wondered 
why the people would not read! I sold the whole 
thing at two cents a pound, and I got a good price. 
Then we scattered among our people papers headed 
as follows : "Please write out the names of half 
a dozen books that you would like to have put into 
this library, and if the committee approves, they 
shall be put in." Hundreds and hundreds of books 
were asked for, and I am bound to say very few 



124 PASTORAI, RELATIONSHIP. 

of them had to be cut out. Then they began to 
read, and then the librarian was busy. 

But all these things are matters of minute detail. 
I found, for example, that one book which I put in, 
"Ecce Coelum," popular sermons on astronomy 
from the Christian standpoint, was never drawn, 
and I began to suspect it was because of its Latin 
title — T thought they were afraid of it ; so I spoke 
of it from the pulpit and recommended it as being 
popular, clear, fascinating, helpful ; and instantly 
that book began to run. Then I saw how from the 
pulpit from time to time I could recommend good 
books in our Sunday School library — books whose 
influence I wanted to have intensely felt by the 
people, and from time to time I would give a brief 
talk on five or six strong books. So the library, 
from being a derision and a delusion, became an 
aid to us, and the books began to run fast, and I 
began to feel that we were putting good reading into 
the minds of our young people, and by just so far 
antagonizing the bad reading. For read they will 
— it is only a question of what they read. 

Endless is this matter of detail. When the libra- 
rian in the Sunday School finds his books are worn 
out he raises a cry. In the average school nobody 
attends and he holds his peace for a little ; then bye 
and bye he raises a louder cry, and they look round, 
and — sink back. Bye and bye when things have 
become unendurable he raises a scream. Then they 
appoint a committee — sometimes of quite young peo- 
ple. Then they send to the denominational publish- 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 125 

ing house for a list of books, and the books are 
shipped up for selection. Then the young com- 
mittee has a meeting in the lecture room of the 
church, and after passing the time of day and sundry 
jokes, old and new, some one says, "Well, let's get 
to work at the books." Then they sit down, young 
men and maidens, and flirt over the books. Here 
is a book that has got quite a number of pictures 
and is very attractive outside — take that. It is ac- 
cepted. The next book, no pictures — that won't do. 
And so they go through a hundred books in one 
evening, with chitchat in between. Then the books 
are bought and the librarian is at peace. But bye 
and bye some one says, "What trash we have got 
on our Sunday School library shelves !" Who got 
it? How did you manage to get it? It was the 
lack of attention to the details of the thing, that 
wasted money on useless books, because incompetent 
people were set to choose them. 

I am not here, however, to go into all the details 
of these adjuncts in our work for our children, but 
merely to act as a guidepost pointing out the way 
of mistake and of remedy. 

In the matter of missionary education we are 
lamentably short in living up to our privilege and 
opportunity. That denomination whose young peo- 
ple are taught to love God's cause the world over 
is the denomination which fifty years from now will 
be the leading denomination in heathen lands. But 
let the young people be carelessly educated, and the 
cause at large will feel it, while the world lying 



126 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

in darkness will abide in its darkness, instead of 
finding the light of truth shine upon it in the face 
of Jesus Christ. Oh, if we do not cultivate the 
missionary spirit in the young it will not be culti- 
vated when they are old ; because if there be one 
thing above another which grows in the wrong 
direction, it is the abuse of money, either in prodi- 
gality or in miserliness. The young prodigal be- 
comes the old spendthrift, and the young hoarder 
becomes the aged miser. 

Take another of these great adjuncts in our Sun- 
day School work, and that is the secretary's de- 
partment. The secretary is oftentimes a much 
abused official, but if the work be well done he 
stands almost next to the superintendent in im- 
portance; for if the school be graded the secretary 
has the keeping of the records, and he is largely 
handling the machinery which holds the scholars in 
their proper line. In our Sunday School the records 
are so kept, though it is a large school, that I can 
take a scholar to-day in school and trace that scholar 
back on the records, year after year, from the senior 
department to the junior, and the junior to the in- 
termediate, and the intermediate to primary A, and 
primary A to primary i, and primary I to prepara- 
tory class, and preparatory class to the home ; I can 
know the "presents" and the "absents" of that in- 
dividual, and the amount given by that individual 
for missionary contributions for every Sunday in all 
those years. That secretary's position is no sine- 
cure, and the scholars know that those records are 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 127 

there, and that their standing is largely based on 
the record that is made, and that sometimes their 
future is decided by that record — their secular 
future, I mean. 

So when you look into all the warp and woof of 
this complex fabric which forms a Sunday School, 
you understand very clearly that every detail must 
be attended to, so that the whole machinery may 
move on smoothly, no part having to exercise 
strength in the overcoming of friction, but every 
part doing its own work, and aiding as far as it 
can every other department in the Sunday School 
organization. When in that way we begin to do 
our work then we find it to be a great joy, and then 
the efficiency of the Sunday School grows to such 
a degree that scholars are rejoiced, though they 
hardly know the reason why, and teachers feel their 
work is easy to do, though they hardly can explain 
the wherefore of it. 

John Wanamaker one time came into the school 
which I had the privilege of ministering to, and he 
said to me, "Tell me in a word the secret of the 
success of this school," and I said, "Endless atten- 
tion to detail." 

The more we look into this complex matter of 
administration, therefore, the more steadily we con- 
template the relative opportunities and the duties 
which come to the workers, the more it opens up 
to us as a grand privilege to be thus co-workers 
with each other and with God, and the more im- 
portant these things become to us, because we see 



128 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

their significance, and understand their power. I 
will illustrate this briefly by four stereopticon 
views, which I saw thrown on the screen lately in 
New York, by the Professor of Astronomy in 
Columbia University. He was lecturing on the 
latest developments of stellar photography. After 
showing us other pictures, he said, "Now, I shall 
show you four pictures, one after the other, of the 
same nebula, with its surrounding stellar compan- 
ions. " He threw one of these pictures on the screen 
and said, "This was exposed for three minutes." 
The nebula was somewhat faint, and there appeared 
here and there a star. The next picture he said 
was the result of an exposure to the same spot in 
the heavens for three hours. The nebula was con- 
siderably clearer, and there were a few more stars. 
The third picture was one which had been exposed 
on two consecutive nights to the same spot in the 
heavens for eight hours. The nebula was quite 
startling and the stars quite abundant. The fourth 
picture was one of the same spot, exposed for six 
consecutive nights twenty-five hours, and the audi- 
ence burst into applause. The nebula was glorious, 
and the stars hosts on hosts. The professor then 
said, "Gentlemen, ycu are now seeing what the 
naked eye, with the assistance of the most powerful 
telescope in the world, never will see ; for the eye 
never can hold itself steadily to the image for 
twenty-five consecutive hours." And he added, 
"Gentlemen, if I had exposed that plate for fifty 
hours the only result would have been that the 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 129 

nebula would have been still grander and the stars 
still more multitudinous." 

So with our work. As we look at What We 
Teach, the longer we look at the Word of God, the 
more vivid will become our impression of its beauty 
and its majesty. As we think of, How We Teach, 
the longer we ponder that question, the more we 
shall understand the beautiful and yet the plain 
principles of pedagogy and paidology, and the more 
entranced we shall be with the possibilities that are 
opening up to us. As we turn our thoughts toward 
Whom We Teach, the child will stand in front ; and 
as we understand more and more of his complex 
and charming nature,the more we shall be fascinated, 
the more we shall wonder, the more we shall love, 
and the harder we shall labor. As we begin to 
gaze in turn on why we are handling this Word for 
this child, the more we shall be amazed at the pos- 
sibilities that are opening up, and, understanding 
those beauties and graces of Christian character 
that our scholars may assume, we shall be filled 
with desire to be workmen who need not to be 
ashamed. Whichever way we turn our attention, 
the longer we focalize our vision on any one of 
these constituent principles of Sunday School work, 
the clearer it will become to us that it is of God, 
and that we are in the line of God's workmanship, 
studying God's methods and God's ways for the 
sake of receiving divine results with our scholars. 
So nothing will be small, nothing will be in any 
sense vulgar ; so everything will be a privilege, and 



130 PASTORAL I/EC ADER SHIP. 

we shall count ourselves to be happy to be ministers 
of God along any line to these who are put under 
our care. 

We have come to the end of our journey together 
along this Sunday School pathway. We have stood 
as Moses stood on Mount Nebo and have looked 
over the pleasant Land of Promise. From the 
heights of privilege we have gained bird's-eye views 
of divine truth intellectually and of divine activities 
practically. We have come nearer, and have entered 
this land which is to be our temporary inheritance, 
and have sat by still waters and wandered among 
green pastures, and it has been good for us, as we 
have understood how pleasant is the land given to 
us to inherit — how it flows with milk and honey. 
We have lifted up our eyes as did the patriarchs, 
and have seen not only the land which now we 
possess and the privileges which now are ours, but 
our spiritual vision has been clarified during these 
days, and as the clouds have parted, we have en- 
dured for a while as seeing that which is invisible. 
Earthly things have sometimes faded from our 
vision during these hours, and we have seen in vision 
the city whose builder and maker is God, which 
hath foundations ; we have realized that the work 
done here is going to be gloriously rewarded yonder ; 
that the seed sown here is going in part to give us 
fruitage here as our reward, but that the glorious 
harvest-home is to be yonder, in that land which 
remaineth for the people of God. So in time we 
are working for eternity, and on earth we are pre- 



ADJUNCTS IN OUR TEACHING. 131 

paring for glory. So in the midst of limitations 
we are working for that unlimited and endless life 
that lies beyond. Thus it seems to me that we may 
enter in spirit into that intense feeling which char- 
acterized the saintly Rutherford as he contemplated 
the little church at Anworth, for which he had suf- 
fered many a persecution, and in whose behalf he 
had born many a burden. Thinking of his beloved 
parish with its loved souls, he sang: "Oh, if some 
soul from Anworth meet me at God's right hand, 
my heaven will be two heavens, in Immanuers 
land." And you and I as workers with these schol- 
ars of ours can adapt slightly his words, and with 
fulness of heart say: "Oh, if one soul from my 
class meet me at God's right hand, my heaven will 
be two heavens, in Immanuel's land." 



THREE SUPPLEMENTARY LECTURES. 

SEE PREFATORY NOTE. 



LECTURE I. 
a bird's-eye view of the book of acts. 

Many of our teachers teach the section assigned 
them in their lesson without adequate knowledge 
of what preceded and what follows. They teach 
as though they had struck an oasis in the desert, 
and they know not how they got to that charming 
spot nor how they are going to leave it. This re- 
sults from a very fragmentary knowledge on their 
part of the Word, and, therefore, in a very frag- 
mentary impartation of the truth in its relationship 
to other truths. They are teaching as a secular 
teacher might do, who taught the story of President 
Lincoln without any antecedents or consequences; 
who taught the story of our Revolutionary War 
without the preceding Colonial History and suc- 
ceeding national events. There would be some use 
in teaching of that kind; but that it falls very far 
short of the normal line of teaching, all will grant. 

Next year we return again in the International 
Series to the Acts of the Apostles. We have already 
studied them for six months this year, and we re- 
sume their study and close the Acts with the first 
six months of 1903. My experience has been that 
teachers, as they enter a book or a period of history, 
need to have that book or period laid before them 
in bird's-eye outline, so that they may better under- 
133 



134 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

stand and more wisely impart the facts and the 
teachings of that book. I traveled through Europe 
once with a gentleman who had a most intelligent 
way of sight-seeing. Whenever we reached a city 
we first mounted some tower and got a bird's-eye 
view of the city as a whole, with its points of com- 
pass, its great land marks. Having done that, we 
came down and took carriages and drove rapidly 
through the great arteries of the city, that we might 
understand its great thoroughfares. Having thus 
gained a generic idea of the city, we then descended 
to detail, and visited this church, that museum, 
yonder palace. In that way I believe we got a better 
idea of the cities that we visited than the ordinary 
traveler possibly can. In studying the Word of 
God we shall do well, therefore, to lead our teachers 
into bird's-eye views of the situation, so that they 
may grasp the great outstanding facts and trends of 
the history. Then we may well take the larger in- 
dividual events; and finally concentrate their atten- 
tion on the important but somewhat less obvious 
truths which the narrative sets forth. 

If the pastor have no teachers' meeting — which 
is to be much deplored — he must help his teachers 
from the pulpit, watching ahead to see what the 
International or other course is, and preparing the 
teachers in large sweeps of history and minor details 
of the narrative, for the work to which they are 
called. They will then work with more intelligence, 
more enthusiasm ; and naturally this intelligence and 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OE THE BOOK OF ACTS. 135 

enthusiasm will communicate themselves to their 
classes. 

To begin with, in our present theme: Many 
teachers fail to realize that the beloved physician is 
the only Gentile who has contributed one word to 
the Holy Scriptures. All others were Jews. To this 
Gentile was given this great privilege of writing 
the matchless Gospel of Luke and the still more 
matchless Acts of the Apostles. Let them under- 
stand, therefore, that we are now studying Gentile 
literature; and we are glad to see that the Gentile 
literature does not fall short of the Jewish, and that 
Luke is the peer of John or Matthew. 

There are certain great outstanding events in the 
story of the Acts, which, if we mark them well, will 
guide us in all our more minute study of the Word. 
Of these we shall mention six. These having been 
made very clear to our teachers, all the rest of the 
story falls into proper relationship to these six 
dominating events. 

After our Lord's ascension the situation of the 
church was as follows : A small body of believers 
in Jerusalem, numbering about one hundred and 
twenty, bereft of their Master, with the injunction 
given to them to preach the gospel in Jerusalem, 
Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth. A powerless body they were, for they had 
not as yet received the fulfillment of the promise 
of power. Though powerless they were joyous, 
for now they understood that Crucifixion was not 
disaster; that Resurrection and Ascension repaired 



136 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

disaster ; and that the divine blessing would soon be 
added to them in the work to which they were 
called. We see, however, a body of powerless men 
and women, waiting for power. 

Powerless ! There are myriads of illustrations 
of this, which can make it clear to our scholars. 
Some time ago a physician who is using electricity 
for therapeutic purposes asked me to go to his office, 
saying that he would show me some wonderful 
things. When I reached the office he put me into 
the insulating chair and then turned 300,000 
volts of electricity into my body — not dynamic, 
otherwise I should not be here to tell the tale — but 
static electricity. Instantly I felt that I was sur- 
charged with power; I felt it streaming from me 
invisibly. He then took an ordinary electric light, 
without the carbon film inside, and gave it to me 
to hold. Immediately the room was lighted with 
the electricity flowing from my body and streaming 
through the glass. He took that from me and put 
a chain into my hand which was attached to a 
machine. Instantly the machine began to run furi- 
ously, all because of the power that I received and 
was now discharging. I felt myself filled with a 
mysterious potency. Before the current was turned 
through me I was as powerless to do those things 
as I now am. After the current was turned on, 
these and other things were child's-play to me. So 
before the power comes on this waiting band of 
believers they are powerless and can do nothing. 



a bird's-eye view of the book oe acts. 137 

After the power comes they are metamorphosed and 
become well-nigh omnipotent. 

The first great event, therefore, of the Acts of the 
Apostles is Pentecost, which means Power. There 
was the induement of the Holy Spirit for service, 
and for a right understanding of the Word, which 
before had been to them largely obscure. With the 
coming of that power instantly its effects were 
known in Jerusalem and the regions round about, 
for immediately the Apostle Peter delivered a ser- 
mon, which was so effective that three thousand 
were brought into the light of the new truth in 
one day. Our Master during the three years and 
a half of his ministry only succeeded in getting 
about five hundred real believers, and here the 
Apostle gets three thousand in one day. No wonder 
that Jesus said, "It is expedient for you that I go 
away, for if I go not away the Holy Spirit, which 
is the Comforter, will not come; but if I go away 
I will send him." Indued thus with power in the 
Word, the Word became effective. Indued thus 
with power in work, the work became marvelous, 
and poor, sinning, feeble Peter becomes a herald of 
salvation and a hero in the new church. From that 
induement with power all the rest of the Acts of the 
Apostles streams. Without that the Book would 
close with the meeting of the one hundred and 
twenty. With that the Book closes in Rome, with 
a church in the Capital of the Roman Empire. 

The second great event was the scattering of the 
church. For a while all went well in Jerusalem. 



138 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

The disciples had favor with the people, the Lord 
added daily unto the church such as should be saved, 
the number of believers probably amounted before 
the persecution broke to about ten thousand. All 
were nicely nursing themselves in Jerusalem, filled 
with joy and comfort and overmastering gratifica- 
tion at their experiences. There was danger that 
the church should forget, that while the beginning 
was to be at Jerusalem the ending was not to be 
there. The result was that, as an eagle stirreth up 
her nest and driveth out her young that they may 
fly, so the Master allowed the disciples to be stirred 
up by the persecution which arose with regard to 
Stephen, and the disciples were scattered every- 
where. It was as though one morning there were 
ten thousand believers in Jerusalem, and the next 
morning there were none left excepting the Apostles. 
What, however, appeared a disaster at first was a 
marvelous benediction to the world; for as these 
believers went everywhere, they went not silent but 
preaching. There were now thousands of preachers 
scattered throughout the land, and the result was 
that in the place of one central fire there were 
started all over the country multitudes of other fires 
of divine truth ; and so what the opponents of Chris- 
tianity had intended as a fearful blow to the new 
faith became a boundless blessing to believer and 
unbeliever. 

The third great event was the conversion of the 
notorious Saul of Tarsus. He was the protagonist 
of the Pharisaic party and the ruthless persecutor of 



A bird's-»ye view of the book of acts. 139 

the church. His was a master mind; he was a 
general in marshaling forces against this infant 
church. Not content with driving them out of Je- 
rusalem, he followed them to the remotest cities, that 
everywhere where the fire had been started he 
might stamp it out and eradicate this new faith. 
The story is familiar to all, how, journeying to far 
off Damascus, he met Him whom he had thus far 
bitterly opposed, and falling down, recognized Him, 
and was instantly changed, saying, "Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" There on that Damascus 
road, as that man fell and cried, came a crisis in 
the history of redemption. There more was wrought 
for the uplifting of the world than on any battle- 
field where men have contended for the mastery. 
The issues of Waterloo, the issues of Trafalgar, 
are trifles compared with those of that spiritual bat- 
tle near Damascus, where the divine triumphed and 
the human yielded. 

It is well sometimes to let our teachers know how 
skeptics in these days treat parts of the Bible. The 
German rationalist says there was no miracle here. 
The fact is that Paul was an excitable man ; that he 
was journeying to Damascus over the plain, which 
is notoriously hot, and it was noonday, and he got 
a sunstroke; and then in his fever he thought he 
saw visions and heard voices. The whole thing 
was a subjective delusion, and not an objective 
reality. That is the lationalistic explanation of this 
miracle. 

Now I never knew that sunstroke turns a perse- 



140 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

cutor into a preacher, or that it makes an evangel- 
ical man out of a skeptic. One of my classmates, 
who was with me in city missions, got half a sun- 
stroke in the city of New York, and he never did 
another stroke of work for a year and six months. 
Paul gets a full sunstroke, and begins instantly to 
preach marvelously. If this German theory be cor- 
rect, then you had better close your theological 
seminary here and stand all your young men out 
against a brick wall, and sunstroke the whole of 
them, and then ordain them. 

The fourth great event is the breaking down of 
the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gen- 
tile. Let us ever remember that up to this time no 
faintest thought had entered the mind of any Apos- 
tle that a Gentile could come into the church unless 
he came through the door of the proselyte. Circum- 
cision was of Moses, and must be carried out in the 
case of all Gentiles who desired to enter the Chris- 
tian church. Mark, please, that when God desired 
to change this and to make the Apostles under- 
stand that to the Gentile also the Word was to be 
preached, and that the condition of Gentile entrance 
into the church was simple faith, he wrought a 
double miracle. They had not understood that faith 
was the requisite, and baptism of the Holy Spirit 
the sign for Jew and Gentile alike, God putting no 
difference between them. For two thousand years 
the divinely built wall between Jew and Gentile 
had stood firm. But one door had led from one 
side to the other, called the gate of the proselyte. 



A bird's-eye view of the book of acts. 141 

When God designed now to break down that middle 
wall of partition, he gave the privilege of its re- 
moval to the Apostle Peter, and that is set forth by 
Peter's experience at Joppa; and here we have a 
second fulfillment of that mysterious power of the 
keys. Peter did have the power of the keys. Peter 
did open the church of Christ at Pentecost to the 
Jew as it was given to none other to do it ; and now 
Peter is to open the door of the church to the Gen- 
tile as no other man ever was allowed to do it ; and 
in that power lies the power of the keys. But mark 
you, the Master never said to Peter, "You pass the 
keys over to your successor, and he to his successor, 
until finally in the year 1902 they shall be in Rome." 

To return: When our Lord designed to open 
the door of the church to the Gentiles, so tremend- 
ous was the change necessary to be secured in the 
Apostolic mind that he wrought a double miracle. 
Double miracles are very rare. One miracle was 
wrought for Peter in Joppa, another for Cornelius 
in Cesarea; and when these two miracles were 
brought together they were found to match, and the 
matching of the two convinced Peter of the larger 
step that must be taken and the new departure upon 
which he must enter. It was the matching of the 
two miracles that completed his conviction. 

Pause a moment. Think how much evidence 
would be necessary for us if the Lord's Supper and 
Baptism were to be abrogated in the church to-day. 
We should require absolute proof of the divine guid- 
ance before we should be willing to do it. So Peter 



142 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

required absolute proof of divine guidance before he 
was willing to consider the wall as removed. 

Some time ago there came to me a letter from a 
stranger in Germany, saying, "I know you are a 
city missionary. I send to your care a trunk. In- 
closed in this letter you will find a piece of paper, 
cut ; a man will come and present the match of this 
paper, and you will deliver to him the trunk." I 
found in my letter a piece of paper cut in queer 
zigzags. I laid it on my study table and waited 
some weeks. Presently a stranger came in, and I 
said, "Well, sir, what can I do for you ?" He took 
out of his pocketbook another piece of paper match- 
ing the one sent me, and said, "You have got the 
match of that, I think." I put the two pieces to- 
gether, and at once said, "There's your trunk." 

God gave Peter a revelation in Joppa and Cor- 
nelius one in Cesarea. Peter put the two together 
and they matched, and he said, "It is of the Lord." 
That is how the middle wall of partition went down. 
That is how mere Gentiles who were believers could 
enter the church without first becoming Jews. 
Notice how repeatedly God had to knock at the door 
of Peter's intelligence before his preconceived and 
thus far correct notions gave way to the new and 
larger truth. 

Peter is on the house top praying, hungry at 
noon time, waiting for his meal. He passes into 
a vision. Down comes a sheet from heaven, knit 
together at the four corners, and a voice says, "Rise, 
Peter; slay and eat." In vision Peter rises and 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OE THE BOOK OE ACTS. 143 

looks into the sheet. Horrors ! Four-footed beasts 
— unclean, creeping things. Instantly Peter says, 
"Not so, Lord. I have never eaten anything com- 
mon or unclean;" and the voice says, "What God 
has cleansed, that call not thou common," and up 
goes the sheet. In two or three minutes down 
comes the sheet again, and the voice says, "Rise, 
Peter; slay and eat." Now, I dare say Peter 
thought, "Things are changed inside of that sheet. 
My remonstrance has been heard." So he looks 
into the sheet again. Same thing — beasts, unclean, 
creeping things. And he says, "Not so, Lord; I 
have never eaten anything common or unclean," and 
the voice says, "What God has cleansed call thou 
not common," and up goes the sheet. In a few 
minutes down comes the sheet again, and the voice 
says, "Rise, Peter; slay and eat." "Now," thinks 
Peter, "Surely there is a change." He looks into 
the sheet — same thing. Indignation was changed 
to wonder but he again says, "Not so, Lord. I 
have never eaten anything common or unclean," and 
for the third time the voice says, "What God has 
cleansed, call thou not common or unclean," and up 
goes the sheet. Now, while Peter wonders and 
wonders why he is told to eat things that Moses 
said he might not eat (speaker here raps on the 
table), a loud knock is heard at the door. Who is 
it? Messengers. From whom? A Gentile. Un- 
clean! For what? Go with him, etc. And then 
Peter, going, finds there has been a corresponding 
revelation to an unclean man — ceremonially — and he 



144 PASTORAL I^ADEJRSHIP. 

says, "God has shown me that I should call nothing 
common or unclean." 

So down went that wall — the two thousand-year- 
old wall, and that wall has remained down until this 
day. There is now neither Jew nor Gentile, Par- 
thian nor Scythian, bond nor free; all are one in 
Christ Jesus. No greater event could have taken 
place than this, the fourth event in the Acts — the 
breaking down of that wall. 

Parenthetically, I might say, in the kindliest spirit 
too, that unfortunately, that wall being down, men 
have been trying to build other walls of division 
between brethren and brethren, and there are certain 
walls that are still standing. I notice they show 
signs of age lately. There is my Presbyterian wall. 
I am glad that it is not very high or very broad. 
It has got to go down. And, however, we may 
differ with regard to minor things, more and more 
the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ are recogniz- 
ing the major things, are co-operating in spirit and 
wishing each other Godspeed in their work. 

The fifth great event was the beginning of organ- 
ized missionary work; and this great privilege fell 
to the lot of the church in Antioch. They had been 
having blessed times, and as they waited before 
the Lord and ministered, the Holy Ghost said, 
"Separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work 
whereunto I have called them." Heeding the call, 
they laid hands on them and sent them forth to 
their work as the first regularly, officially appointed 
missionaries of Christ on earth. That was a great 



A bird's-eye view of the book of acts. 145 

event. Our modern missionary societies are, in 
some measure at least, the continuation of that first 
beginning of church missionary work. There in 
Antioch they realized that they owed a debt to the 
world, and they must pay the debt promptly. Will 
you notice that when the Holy Ghost chose two of 
the workers in Antioch he took their two best work- 
ers, Paul and Barnabas? Had he acted as some 
modern churches act he would have said, "You need 
the best workers at home. You have got some 
second-class talent. There is Manaen and Simeon, 
who play a very good second violin. Send them 
out to the heathen and keep your first violins at 
home." That is the way churches sometimes act in 
these days ; if you have got a poor stick, send him 
to the mission, and keep your best man for the 
home church. There is less acting on that prin- 
ciple in foreign missions to-day, but when I was a 
boy in Turkey I saw some missionaries sent out 
there who were very surprising. They had to be 
sent home. Where they are now, I am sure I don't 
know. We want to remember that for the scatter- 
ing of the Gospel the best talent must be utilized, 
and I personally believe that if in many of our large 
cities the chief ministers were to resign and go into 
the slums, the mother church would have a Pente- 
cost over again, and the slums would be uplifted 
and enlightened. That which we keep we lose ; that 
which we give we have; and our blessed Master 
himself it is who says, "It is more blessed to give 

than to receive." The church's biggest benediction 
10 



146 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

to-day consists in the names of those who from 
our midst have gone out, like Henry Martin 
and Adoniram Judson, Livingstone, Hannington, 
Mackay of Uganda, Mackay of Formosa, and Cham- 
berlain of Arcot. These are our leading lights to- 
day. There in Anticch the pace was set for the 
churches, and there the example given which the 
churches would do well to follow, and in following 
be filled with the divine presence. 

The sixth great event was the crossing of the 
Gospel from Asia to Europe. Westward the trend 
of Christian Empire started. Paul at Troas, design- 
ing to go into the other parts of Asia, is forbidden 
of the Holy Ghost. There comes the divine vision 
of a man of Macedonia, saying, "Come over and 
help us/' and swiftly gathering with him all the 
men he could muster, they took ship and crossed 
the Hellespont. Marvelous and most blessed cross- 
ing ! There had been crossings before that. Darius 
crossed the Hellespont with a million, to conquer 
Europe, and failed. Alexander crossed the Helles- 
pont the other way, to conquer the whole of Asia 
and failed. Since then the Mohammedan has 
crossed in the same locality to conquer the whole of 
Europe, and has failed. Here there is an army of 
four — Paul, Silas, Timothy, Luke; an army of in- 
vasion. Without sword or spear, without shield or 
bow, they are passing over to conquer the world for 
Christ; and to conquer religiously I believe is far 
harder than to conquer politically. We may conquer 
the Moros in the Philippines politically, but it will 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE BOOK OE ACTS. 147 

be a harder task to conquer those Mohammedans 
religiously. The project of these four men is to 
conquer Europe religiously for Christ, and Europe 
was then totally idolatrous from the Pillars of Her- 
cules to the Scythian plains. 

I have in my pocket — though I had not intended 
to use them for this purpose — coins of Europe, 
Asia and Africa from before the Christian era. On 
every coin here there is an idol. Business was 
idolatrous, as you will see when you see the coins 
of Christ's time. Here is a coin of Africa ; on it 
the divinity Melkart. Here is a coin of Alexander 
the Great ; on it Herakles and Jupiter. Here is the 
oldest European coin known, a coin of Aegina; on 
it a turtle, symbol of Aphrodite, who was the Astarte 
of the Phoenicians and the Ashtoreth of Jewish 
days. Here is a coin of Velia, a Greek colony ; on 
it Minerva, and on the other side the symbol of the 
Sun God. Here is a coin of Athens, 400 B. C. ; on 
it Minerva, to whom the temple of the Parthenon 
was built. Here is a coin of Tarsus, from which 
Saul came ; on it Baal-Tarsus. These I use merely 
as an illustration to show how idolatry permeated 
the very warp and woof of heathen life; and to 
bring that idolatry down and to set up in its place 
our Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ his Divine 
Son, was the purpose of this little army of invasion, 
and we to-day are the consequence of that invasion, 
because they went rejoicing as we do in the light 
of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

Singular — that army of invasion made for its 



148 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

first convert a woman, Lydia; and I might say in 
passing that there is to-day in the museum in Con- 
stantinople a gravestone dug up at Thyatira, record- 
ing the name of Lydia, a seller of purple. I do 
not affirm that that is her gravestone, but it seems 
likely. A woman ! Type and promise of the bless- 
ing that the Gospel was to bring to womankind. 
For there is no religion on earth excepting that of 
Jesus Christ, where woman occupies the position 
that God intended for her. Side by side God placed 
man and woman, and when sin came man thrust 
woman behind him and pushed her down ; and from 
that day to this in all idolatrous and Mohammedan 
lands woman walks behind man and is below man. 
Christianity brings her up and forward and places 
her again where she always ought to have stood, 
as man's helpmeet, side by side. 

I heard Dr. J. G. Holland say once in discussing 
the question of the relationship of the sexes, that 
man has no sphere and woman has no sphere. Man, 
he said, has a hemisphere, and woman has a hemis- 
phere, and only when you bring them together is 
there a sphere. That is what the Gospel does — it 
brings them together; and yet there are certain 
foolish people in our days who want the woman to 
take the precedence of man and go a little ahead of 
him, which is as unscriptural as to make her go 
behind; I have nothing but pity, mingled with a 
fair amount of contempt, for any such folly. 

The second blessing which came through this 
army of four was to that Pythoness under the 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OE THE BOOK OF ACTS. 149 

charge of the syndicate, you remember, who made 
money by her vaticinations. The power of the Gos- 
pel broke those chains and loosed that woman, and 
she followed the Apostles, praising God. The re- 
sult of it, however, was that before night half of 
the army of invasion was in jail ! Is that the final 
issue? To conquer Europe, and half of them jailed 
at Philippi. Dark outcome! But when the night 
is darkest the morning is nearest; and Paul and 
Silas in that prison, with backs bleeding, and feet 
aching, and mouths thirsting with the fever of un- 
cared-for wounds, instead of murmuring are sing- 
ing a duet of praise. That is the kind of a man you 
want for a missionary, whom nothing can daunt, 
and who, though he be hung with his legs up, as 
was Adoniram Judson, counts it as nothing if he 
be allowed to suffer for the sake of Jesus Christ 
who suffered for him. And there out of the midst 
of their woe, surcharged themselves with joy, they 
win the heart of the very man who put their feet 
in the stocks and locked them in the prison, and 
victory was snatched from defeat, and the promise 
of the coming triumph was once more seen. 

Brethren, if we in these ways open up broad 
sweeps of Scripture to our teachers, whenever we 
are approaching a new section of the Word, we 
give them a vantage ground, so that intelligently 
they begin the study, seeing whither it is leading 
them; so that intelligently they mark the great 
milestones in the history of the progress of Chris- 
tianity, and can tell how they are steadfastly nearing 



150 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

that final triumph which we all believe will crown 
the faithful work of the followers of our Lord. So 
we lead them into green pastures, beside still waters, 
to mountain tops of vision and into sweet vales of 
rest, and make them understand the divine Word 
better, so that they can impart it more perfectly. 



LECTURE II. 



This morning our theme is, Teachers' Meetings. 
The importance of the teachers' meetings for the 
welfare of. the Sunday School can hardly be ex- 
aggerated. It is as important as any of the other 
week-night meetings, because it is a preparation of 
the teachers for multiplying the work that is done 
for them. Ten teachers mean a hundred scholars. 
If I direct ten leaders aright I am then directing 
one hundred followers aright. If out of the Sunday 
School ranks of to-day are to come the church 
members, the church officers and the teachers of the 
future, how important that these scholars should be 
rightly instructed, rooted and grounded in the faith 
so that they may be able to give a reason to any 
one who asks, for the faith that is within them. A 
well conducted school in the present, means a well 
grounded church in the future. Well instructed 
teachers in this school, when in the providence of 
God they are removed from this school, mean well 
instructed teachers in some other school. So the 
influence of a teachers' meeting in due course of 
time manifests itself in other centers than in that 
where the teachers are first instructed. I am re- 
minded of this because in the church to which I 

151 



152 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

ministered years ago there were many who were 
strongly guided, and I think well grounded. To- 
day a number of those are superintendents of other 
schools, and are introducing there the same methods 
which proved to them so beneficial while they tar- 
ried with us. Therefore we must exalt the teach- 
ers' meeting as one of exceeding great importance. 

When teachers come to me and say, "I cannot 
attend the teachers' meeting and the prayer meet- 
ing," my response is, "Very well; then drop the 
prayer meeting and attend the teachers' meeting as 
of more importance to you as a teacher." My 
teachers were working people — wage-earners, and 
sometimes they could not give two nights a week. 
It was wiser for them then to take that evening 
where they absorbed most, so that they could again 
give it out. There is little danger that the teacher 
who attends teachers' meetings will be drawn away 
needlessly from the prayer meeting; because what 
is received in the teachers' meeting vitalizes the 
Christian life, so that if time be at their disposal 
they will surely attend the prayer meeting. They 
will also be able to take part in the prayer meeting 
more to edification than if they had not been at the 
teachers' meeting. 

A teachers' meeting should not be merged with 
another meeting. It injures both and helps neither. 
There are pastors who for their regular week-night 
service take the Sunday School lesson. Then they 
must of necessity handle it as a prayer meeting 
topic, which means a lecture. That is no teachers' 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 153 

meeting; for there are others than teachers there, 
and the speaker must adapt himself to the other 
elements and cannot work pedagogically for his 
teacher-force. He is trying to ride two horses, 
which in the last resort is generally disastrous. He 
is in something the same condition in which your 
speaker has been during these lectures to the semi- 
nary. I have had to minister to the theological stu- 
dent primarily, but there has been the other large 
constituency, and I have had to pay attention to 
them, and so very possibly damaged the work tha*t 
I was doing specifically for the ministry. 

A teachers' meeting should not be the tail of 
another meeting. To save time we sometimes first 
have the prayer meeting, and then, dismissing, 
enter the teachers' meeting. This may save time, 
but it loses power; and what we want in the 
teachers' meeting pre-eminently is power. We 
lose power, because we get our teachers some- 
what exhausted with the activities of the previ- 
ous meeting. An hour is a long time for unin- 
structed minds, and when to that you add another 
hour you begin wearied, and minds are not fresh 
and alert. It is further injurious because many 
teachers cannot stay so late as is necessary if one 
meeting is superimposed upon another. The teach- 
ers' meeting ought to have for itself an evening 
specially devoted to it, when there is time, when 
we are fresh, when there is homogeneity on the part 
of the attendants, they being banded together as 
teachers and officers. 



154 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

There are some things which a teachers' meeting 
should not be. It should not be a debating society. 
There are teachers who are argumentative— there 
are some ministers who are pugnacious ; and when 
the argumentative brother and the pugnacious pas- 
tor begin, the average teacher soon wearies. Often 
you will find a brother who is great on foreordina- 
tion and free will, and whenever he sights that 
question from afar he rushes into it as a horse 
rushes into battle. Other teachers weary of dis- 
cussion and debate and stay away, and so you lose 
them. Here we have to be very careful as min- 
isters that when opinions are propounded by teach- 
ers which do not tally with our opinions we should 
not try to argue them down. When you have a 
"Thus saith the Lord," clean-cut, then stand for it ; 
but when it is a question of ways, means, personal 
liberty, let the brother who dissents from you state 
his opinion, you state yours, and tell the teachers, 
"Take your choice." Nothing will sooner kill a 
meeting than argument. 

A teachers' meeting should not be a lecture. Our 
tendency as pastors is to talk on, and wrongly 
think that all that we say is entering the minds 
of the listeners. Not necessarily, at all. Proba- 
bly the reverse is true. Teachers weary of a 
lecture. Generally the tendency with the lecturer 
is that he flies too high, failing to understand the 
low plane of the average teacher's intelligence ; and 
so we lecture on serenely, and the teacher sits still, 
bored, and easily fails to attend. 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 155 

At one time when I began teachers' meetings 
I found they were numerically a failure. I did not 
know what the matter was, so I said, "Teachers, 
this is a failure. Be brave, and come and tell me 
where I am making mistakes." One lady came and 
said, "You talk too much. ,, It hurt me, but it 
helped me. She was right. I was lecturing at 
them, and not talking with them. 

A teachers' meeting should not be a social club. 
Here is their danger — the young people coming to- 
gether, greeting each other, passing the time of day, 
telling the last story, having hilarious times ; and 
as soon as the meeting is through, resuming the 
hilarity of the preceding period. A teachers' meet- 
ing is something more serious than a mere social 
gathering. Sociable it ought to be, but not a talking 
club and one for the exchange of humorous anec- 
dotes. 

What should a teachers' meeting be ? A meeting 
for the study of the lesson — that is its main object. 
In this matter of the study of the lesson there must 
be co-operation between leader and led. There 
must be mutual exchange of thought, and pro- 
pounding of questions or difficulties. We meet to 
study the lesson, not from the standpoint of the 
theological leader but from the standpoint of the 
average lay teacher, who has to break it into small 
crumbs for the lay scholar. Our supreme effort 
then must be so to study the lesson that it shall open 
itself up in a manner easy for a teacher to handle. 
We teach the teachers what to teach and how to 
teach. 



156 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

There are many outlines which have been pro- 
posed for the study of lessons. One which I have 
used more than any other outline is this, and I give 
it as suggestive in all your work. 

HERE 

HEN 

HO 

HAT 

HAT THEN. 

With regard to every lesson we must know, to 
begin with, the geography, Where. For it makes a 
great difference in my pictorial mental concept where 
I am. Am I with Moses in Egypt? Then my 
lesson surroundings bring in pryamids, sphinxes, 
temples, palm trees, river, camels. That is my 
background. Am I with Moses at Mt. Sinai ? The 
background becomes very stern — mountains, beet- 
ling crags, solitude, silence. Am I with Paul in 
Rome, writing to Timothy? Now I see the Coli- 
seum, and the Forum, and the Capitoline Hill, and 
the Roman Guard, and the Romans on the streets. 
The whole scene changes. Am I with Abraham? 
Now it is open country, and tents, and flocks, and 
herds, and springs of water. The Where vivifies 
the scene, when I have made that clear to my teach- 
ers. 

Then comes the chronological question, the When. 
Here we are often at sea, because the Bible does 
not deal with history as we do, with accurate dates ; 
but generically we can fix the chronology before 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 157 

Solomon's day, and quite accurately after. All you 
want is the generic idea, so that the lessons may be 
put into right relationship with preceding and suc- 
ceeding lessons. It is only necessary to refer to 
this briefly. 

The third question that we want to answer, which 
we get from our teachers by questioning, is Who? 
Who are the actors in this lesson. Take last Sun- 
day's lesson : It was Gideon and the angel and the 
thirty-two thousand; then the ten thousand, and 
then the three hundred, and then the hosts of 
Midian. Those were the Who. Next Sunday it 
will be Samuel and God and Eli. Draw out of 
them then the Who — the actors ; so that they may be 
to us living characters. Even in the case of the 
Epistles — who is it who is writing? Paul. Where 
is he writing from? Rome. When did he write? 
The year 67. To whom did he write? Timothy. 
So we get our persons who are the actors in the 
scene we are about to study. 

Then comes the next question. These actors 
did something. They are not dummies ; and so we 
have the question, What? Time settled, place set- 
tled, people settled; now, events. There you come 
to that picturesque setting which I tried somewhat 
to illustrate the other night. There by question 
and answer you draw out the mental picture that 
individual teachers have, and one teacher adds a 
particular, and another another particular, and so 
you get your actors living and moving and doing 
things. Our scholars love to see people doing 



158 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

things, Thus the lesson begins to assume a vivified 
form. Difficulties in the minds of the teachers are 
cleared away, the whole begins to form itself into 
a living unit, and the teacher begins to see. What 
the teacher sees the teacher can tell. 

If that were all of our work it would be relatively 
easy; but there is something more than that, to 
which all this leads, which, if this does not reach, 
it falls short of its supreme end; and that is the 
last of these questions, just as simple as the others 
in form, but not always so simple in the handling 
of it— What then ? 

Abraham is dead, and the fathers are dead. We 
are living in this land. What has all that got to 
do with Jim and Sam and Susie? There is where 
you sharpen up to the application of the underlying 
principles which every lesson contains. What has 
all this to do with me? There comes that sharpen- 
ing up which Nathan so admirably exemplified when 
he told the parable of the lamb, and ended up at 
last, saying, "Thou art the man !" All the rest was 
preliminary— that was final. 

In answering the question, What then? we 
must diversify the application according to the 
changing nature of the lesson material. If we are 
watchfully previewing the quarter's lessons we shall 
not overlap in the answer to the What then ? Take 
in every lesson, for the practical application, that 
which is most peculiar to that lesson. "Times of 
the Judges," we had as a lesson. Peculiar applica- 
tion? This — Sin and Suffer. Repent and be 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 159 

Rescued. That lesson holds this as its main teach- 
ing. Lesson: "Gideon and the three hundred." 
Main teaching : I, plus God, more than all my foes. 
No other lesson in the quarter teaches that truth so 
clearly. "Joshua's Farewell Address:" Main les- 
son, The importance of right choice. "Samuel called 
of God :" Main lesson, God calls children as much 
as ever. 

You see what I am after with the What then? 
First state the facts, then elaborate, then illustrate ; 
so that your teachers may have material given to 
them which they can make over and adapt to the 
special wants of their respective classes. That will 
require on the part of the leader — who generally 
must be the pastor — some foresight. It will require 
a good deal of simplification; but when you teach 
so that the youngest understands, you teach so that 
the oldest are profited. 

In this matter of drawing out replies to these five 
questions, you must use question and answer ; other- 
wise it develops into a lecture. But some one says, 
"My teachers won't answer, and some of my teach- 
ers say, 'If you ask me a question, I won't come.' " 
Yes, they will — if you ask a question easy enough. 
But if you fire a double-decker at a feeble and timid 
woman, she will shrink up within herself and will 
disappear. I heard a leader one time ask this ques- 
tion : "Will you please tell me what the date of the 
founding of Rome was" — an absurd question to 
ask. A teacher said, "752 B. C." The leader said, 
"Wrong." The teacher shivered. Grade your ques- 



160 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

tion according to the ability of the teachers to an- 
swer, gently leading them. Teachers used to say 
to me, "I will come to teachers' meeting if you will 
promise not to ask me any questions." I at once 
promised, saying, "I will not ask you any question 
without first getting your consent." After some 
weeks I would say to the teacher, ''Don't you think 
it is time for you to answer — " "No — no." "All 
right." After some weeks more I would say, '"'I 
am going to ask you a question some day — an easy 
one; don't be afraid." Then I would ask some 
question like this, ''Where was our Lord born?" 
And the teacher would say, "Bethlehem," and I 
would say, "Thank you. Quite right." And the 
teacher would feel fine! In that way you can win 
them. If I should ask, ''Where was Jesus born," 
and the teacher said, "Jerusalem," I should not say, 
"Wronsf." I should say, "Ouite near there — onlv 
six miles away. Can any one give me the name 
of the town?" Gently! When a fish won't bite 
do you fire a stone at it, or do you change your 
fly and try again? The whole matter of question 
and answer is a pedagogical matter, and the timidest 
teacher can be drawn out if handled deftly and 
patiently ; and when you get the answer, commend 
the teacher, and she will be as brave as a lion next 
time. 

A teachers' meeting should be devotional and 
sympathetic. When I asked of my teachers the 
question referred to above. "Why is this meeting a 
failure?" one came and said. "You don't give us 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 161 

a chance to pray enough, nor do you give us a 
chance to tell our difficulties and ask for prayer." 
This teacher said, "We have burdens and we have 
none to help us bear them, and you don't give us a 
chance for the sympathy of our co-laborers in this 
case." He was right. From that day on we had 
many prayers — never less than four — in that teach- 
ers' meeting. We had many requests for sympathy, 
counsel, co-operation. Mrs. A has a boy in her 
class, his father is a drunkard, and her heart is 
breaking for the boy, and in meeting if she can say, 
"Pray for me and that boy," and then some one gets 
up and prays earnestly for her and the boy by name, 
her burden is lighter, her heart is more joyous, her 
courage is increased. All these, my brothers, are 
matters of detail and must be carefully attended to. 
When requests for prayer in the teachers' meeting 
multiply, as they always will if it be sympathetic, 
you must be careful whom you ask to lead in prayer ; 
you must be watchful that the person who leads in 
prayer knows whom he is to pray for. A person 
says, "Please pray for a scholar in my class, whose 
mother is dying of cancer," and you ask Brother 
So-and-so to lead in prayer, and he does not know 
perhaps, if the school is large, whether that teacher 
is teaching boys or girls. So he begins, "Oh Lord, 
we pray thee, bless that teacher who has presented 
the case of her scholar, and give the scholar strength 
that he — ah — ah — that she may — that it may do its 
duty." He does not know whether to make the 
pronoun masculine or feminine, and the teacher is 



162 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

wounded that the one who prays does not know it 
is a girl. Who is to blame? The leader. He 
should have said, "Mr. Fox, will you pray for this 
teacher and for her girl?" Then the personal pro- 
noun would have come out smoothly and there 
would not be a hitch. 

Sometimes in our teachers' meetings requests 
multiplied so rapidly that no teacher could remem- 
ber them. Then I jotted them down rapidly, and 
said, "Mr. Lawrence, will you please pray for 
these?" And I specified certain ones, and "Mr. 
Fox, pray for these," and I specified those. Those 
prayers must be personal prayers. Then the teacher 
feels the uplift of co-laborers, as Moses felt the 
uplift of Aaron on the one side and Hur on the 
other. 

Teachers will present difficulties in these meet- 
ings. Other teachers may respond to the difficul- 
ties, having experienced them and found deliver- 
ance. So the teachers' meeting is not only in order 
to instruct the head, but to warm and lighten the 
heart. Then your sympathetic ladies, your sensitive, 
spiritual natures, will come, as they never would 
come to a mere intellectual setting forth of the points 
of the lesson. 

Once a month the teachers' meeting should be 
longer than usual, so as to discuss other needs in 
the school. This cannot be done unless you have 
time. The library is all wrong — the music is not 
satisfactory — something grates in the machinery. 
How can it be rectified? Only then can it be 



TEACHERS' MEETINGS. 163 

rectified when the teachers consult, and decide, and 
act. It is no use for the superintendent who desires 
to regrade his school, ex officio to ordain a re- 
gradation. It is to invite disaster. Let him first 
discuss the matter, that the teacher may see the 
need, understand the method, and vote, "Yes." 
Then the regradation is easy. I have known schools 
badly damaged by a rough regradation, wounding 
feelings, driving away teachers. 

All these matters come legitimately before the 
teachers' meeting, and there the majority always 
should rule, and the minority willingly pull with 
its majority. That is the American method and the 
right method. 

Difficulties. I have noticed that there are always 
difficulties in the way of every good thing. It is 
not difficult to be bad, but it is hard to be good. It 
is not difficult to have a shocking school, but it is 
very difficult to have a good school. There are 
difficulties in the way of teachers' meetings, in the 
country and in the city. One of these difficulties is 
this: Our teachers will not all come. No — no- 
where — never. But that is not a reason why we 
should give up a teachers' meeting. I would have a 
teachers' meeting if I had only four teachers come. 
But if you have a good quartet together they will 
warm up so that they will draw enough to make it 
an octet. There is your little Gideon's band then; 
and Gideon's three hundred, banded together, will 
thrash 135,000, with the aid of God ; and your eight, 
intelligently banded together will make the pulse of 



164 PASTORAI, READERSHIP. 

the school beat stronger and the difficulties in the 
school vanish more quickly. 

When I was in the country as pastor I had two 
teachers' meetings, one on a week-night for those 
living in the village, one on Sunday after my morn- 
ing service for those who drove in from the country 
and who could not come at night; because I was 
bound to have good teaching if I could reach it. 
Hard work? Surely, for a minister who had three 
services to add a fourth; but that was nothing. 
The work is greater than the worker, and we must 
sacrifice ourselves, even if we have to sleep all day 
Saturday to do it. 

Another difficulty : No time. What did you say ? 
You have got all the time there is. No time for 
the most important week-day meeting there is ? Let 
us lay that aside as a reason or excuse never to be 
pleaded before God. We must have time. It is a 
great deal more important for me to go to my teach- 
ers' meeting than to go to the social dinner of the 
Presbyterian Union. Why, I don't give a farthing 
for the Presbyterian Union compared with my teach- 
ers' meeting. Nothing is as important to me and 
my people as that. We will set that aside as a dif- 
ficulty never to be pleaded. 

In the city, they say, ladies won't come out at 
night. Then I would work it so that I got gentle- 
men escorts for the ladies and had them escorted. 
It is some trouble, but there is nothing of value that 
does not call for some trouble. 

"We have tried it and it failed." Then try it 



TEACHERS* MEETINGS. 165 

again, and re-adjust your methods so that you meet 
the wants of your teachers, and they will come. It 
may be that your meeting ought to be changed 
from .evening to afternoon. It may be that you 
ought to have two meetings. It may be that you 
ought to meet in a private house, for the larger 
measure of sociability. That is perfectly feasible 
in small schools, not feasible in schools where there 
are seventy-five to one hundred teachers. There 
was some reason why it failed. Eliminate the reason 
and begin again. 

Who should lead the teachers' meeting ? The best 
available person. If you have a good superintend- 
ent, he ought to lead it. If you have not, then you 
as the pastor ought to lead it, and then observe the 
hints given here, and improve on them, and prove 
yourself to be a right leader. I have noticed that 
sometimes in cities where there are among the 
teachers public school teachers — ladies — it is very 
charming to have a lady lead once in a while, so 
that you get public school methods worked into 
Sunday School activity. It adds freshness. The 
lady teachers will always listen to a lady teacher 
kindly, the men may be edified, and so you get 
variety, which is the spice of a great deal in life. 
Pick your best leaders, and then as far as possible 
back them up. If your superintendent is leader 
and you are pastor, and you see that he is not doing 
as well as he might, join forces with him. Meet 
with him beforehand and talk the lesson over. Train 
him, and then he will do better work, will be grate- 



166 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

ful to you, and you will find that you are multiply- 
ing yourself through him and the teachers, and 
really your influence will be paramount in the school. 
These are hints with regard to the right manage- 
ment of teachers' meetings, to be adapted by every- 
one to suit his peculiar circumstances. But I am 
persuaded that fundamentally these hints will bear 
a superstructure that will be solid, that will be help- 
ful, that will be inspiring to us in our work, and 
fruitful by God's blessing in our Sunday School 
conversion and culture. 



LECTURE III. 

THE PASTOR'S SUNDAY SCHOOL PROBLEM AND ITS 
MASTERY. 

BY E). Y. MUCINS, D.D., I,OUISVII,LE , KY. 

It is the fashion in our day to call many things 
problems which are plain and simple duties, and it 
is to be feared that the tendency to transform duties 
into problems is one of the ways in which the carnal 
nature seeks to avoid moral obligation. But on 
the other hand sometimes it is true that duties 
should be recognized as problems when they are 
not. There is a conventional and perfunctory 
recognition of a duty without any sort of apprecia- 
tion of the problems involved in the discharge of 
the duty. It is like a boy imagining that he has 
worked out the problems in arithmetic because he 
is the possessor of a book on arithmetic, or as if 
one should imagine himself a chemist who had 
verified the theories of chemistry, because he pos- 
sesses a chemical apparatus. The Sunday School 
is to some pastors like the book on arithmetic; it 
contains many problems, but for him they are un- 
solved problems. He has before him a marvelous 
laboratory for demonstration in spiritual chemistry, 
but the process of experiment and verification is 
not carried out. 

My object in writing is to point out the reality 
167 



168 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

and the difficulty of the problem of the Sunday 
School, and particularly the importance of its 
mastery by the pastor. Perhaps there is no depart- 
ment of Christian activity in which there are greater 
or more delicate or more difficult problems than in 
the Sunday School. In all missionary enterprises 
there are great and difficult problems, and yet when 
we analyze the situation these are reduced to one 
or two which are fundamental. One hundred years 
of missions have taught us many lessons, and mis- 
sion boards and missionaries themselves have a 
clear and definite policy and method. On the other 
hand in the Sunday School there are many problems 
which constantly recur in conventions and teach- 
ers' meetings, the solution of which sometimes seems 
as far away as they have ever been. Note a few 
of them. 

Take for example, the teachers' meeting itself. 
No pastor who has made an effort to maintain in 
his Sunday School a successful teachers' meeting 
will fail to declare his profound sense of the dif- 
ficulties involved. The number of Sunday Schools 
in which teachers' meetings are begun and continued 
for a little while, and then allowed to lapse, is legion. 
Repeated efforts are made often in the same school 
to maintain the teachers' meeting, and in many in- 
stances the attempt has been entirely abandoned as 
hopeless. 

Closely related to the above difficulty is that of 
securing competent teachers. There is a growing 
sense of the unfitness of many teachers for their 



THE PASTOR'S SUNDAY SCHOOI, PROBLEM. 169 

work and the inefficiency of a multitude of Sunday 
School teachers. The scholars in the school attend 
the public schools during the week, where they are 
under the instruction of paid teachers who have 
been selected because of their aptness for teaching. 
They often come to the Sunday School to sit under 
a teacher of precisely the opposite type, and in- 
stinctively comparisons are instituted in the mind 
of the scholar between the day school and the Sun- 
day School teachers. The general spread of educa- 
tion is making the problem of the Sunday School 
teacher an increasingly difficult one. 

Another aspect of this problem is that of normal 
training for the Sunday School teacher — how to 
secure in the Sunday School, or in connection with 
it, instruction adapted to train the teacher for his 
work of teaching. Certainly more normal work is 
needed than exists. 

Then there is the problem of the Sunday School 
library. It is too often true that the Sunday School 
library contains many books carelessly selected, weak 
in moral tone, and in many cases teaching hurtful 
error. A very wise committee is needed to read 
and select the books of the Sunday School library, 
and even then it is difficult to keep out the unsuit- 
able volumes. 

Another difficulty which many pastors encounter, 
and to which they surrender, is, removing obstacles 
to Sunday School success. Sometimes incompetent 
leadership, sometimes ambitious self-seeking on the 
part of some Sunday School worker, sometimes 



170 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

vicious habits in class management, are causes of 
the slow progress of the Sunday School. Too often 
the pastor becomes discouraged and hopeless and 
abandons the attempt to correct these evils, especially 
if in attempting to do so friction develops and a 
schism is threatened — the unworthy being allowed 
to dominate this department of the work. These are 
a few of the many urgent and important matters 
which call loudly for the attention of the pastor in 
the average Sunday School. 

We may now notice a few questions of a some- 
what different character which often confront the 
pastor in the Sunday School. One of these is how 
to lead the scholars who are under instruction in 
the Sunday School to a decision for Christ. There 
is much discussion of this question at present. Cer- 
tainly the objective of the Sunday School teacher 
should be the conversion of the members of his 
class and afterward their training in the spiritual 
life, and more than anyone else the pastor can direct 
and control here. 

Again, suppose the pastor neglects the Sunday 
School, being rarely if ever found present when it 
is in session. It may be he is a gifted preacher 
and his pulpit claims his attention chiefly. He mag- 
nifies the pulpit because it is his strong point. His 
congregations are good, and somehow he loses touch 
with his Sunday School people. The superintendent 
becomes dispirited; he feels keenly the lack of the 
pastor's co-operation, but is loth to mention the 
matter. The pastor by thus absenting himself 



THE PASTOR'S SUNDAY SCHOOIy PROBLEM. 171 

slowly imparts a chill that works steadily against 
the welfare of the school. Often the superintendent 
and teachers desire to bring the interests of the 
school to the notice of parents, and most of all they 
yearn for the active co-operation of the pastor. Or 
it may be an effort is being made to build up the 
adult department of the school, and the Sunday 
School forces are compelled to pursue their ends 
apart from the pastor and practically apart from 
the rest of the membership of the church. The 
pastor who thus holds himself aloof from his school 
is sadly lacking in insight and appreciation of the 
conditions for the most complete success in his 
work. 

The pastor's lack of insight is sometimes seen 
in another way. The evangelist comes along and 
conducts the revival, and the Sunday School plays 
little or no part in the plans of pastor and evangelist. 
In the attempt to reach the masses scattered through 
the community, the little ones and their teachers are 
not sufficiently noticed. Perhaps the fault is the 
opposite one — that is, the pastor suffers the visiting 
evangelist to take things in his own hands in the 
Sunday School. It has been known that the ambi- 
tion of the evangelist to run up the roll of converts 
has led him to do a lasting injury to the school. 
I knew of one instance where the evangelist was 
allowed full liberty in the Sunday School. He 
wrought upon the emotions of the children in a 
talk of a half hour until the entire school was over- 
come, and then gave the invitation to confess Christ. 



172 PASTORAL LEADERSHIP. 

The result was that many scores of little children 
came forward under the excitement and made the 
"confession." Years of labor were afterwards re- 
quired to counteract the evil effects of that capital 
blunder. To give such an evangelist the freedom 
of a Sunday School was like permitting a wild 
animal to roam at large in a flower garden. The 
evangelist was to blame, of course, but the pastor 
was to blame for suffering such an abuse. The 
pastor's intentions may have been good ; he may not 
have appreciated the danger beforehand, but this 
only emphasizes the importance of mastering the 
problem of the Sunday School, and this is the point 
for which I am contending. 

There is another point at which the pastor some- 
times fails to see his opportunity. When young 
converts who have been trained in the Sunday 
School, enter the church, it is the pastor's supreme 
opportunity to win a hold upon their characters and 
lives which will be lasting. The first few months 
of the young convert's life as a Christian are the 
most critical in all his Christian history. It is then 
that impressions are made that last forever; it is 
then that the pastor establishes his influence over 
them; it is then that the standards of Christian 
living are adopted which will control ever after- 
wards; it is then most of all that instruction in the 
details of the Christian life and in Christian duty 
and in church membership is most valuable. The 
pastor who fails to see and embrace this opportunity 
is fatally blind. Two months of work on these 



THE PASTOR'S SUNDAY SCHOOL PROBLEM. 173 

young converts is worth two years of effort for them 
in their Christian life afterwards. 

Another delicate and difficult matter in many 
cases is the pastor's own relation to the Sunday 
School. He is confronted with the question how 
far he should project himself into the school, how 
far he should leave its management to others, and 
whether or not he should teach a class. The an- 
swers to all these questions cannot be given off- 
hand. The problem must be confronted and 
wrought out on the field. All that has been written 
above has been chiefly with the object of indicating 
a few of the points at which there is need for earnest 
and arduous study and effort on the part of the 
pastor to master the problem of the Sunday School. 

Notice now how this may be accomplished. Of 
course where the Sunday School receives attention 
in the theological seminary the young minister re- 
ceives much aid from the instruction given there 
upon the subject. It is to be hoped that more and 
more theological seminaries will incorporate the 
Sunday School idea in some form or other in the 
course of instruction. But apart from such instruc- 
tion from others, there are several conditions which 
are requisite if the pastor is to understand and 
utilize to the full extent his opportunity in the Sun- 
day School. 

The first of these is that he shall believe thor- 
oughly in the Sunday School. A merely conven- 
tional recognition of the place and use of the Sun- 
day School is not sufficient. The pastor cannot 



174 PASTOR A I, LEADERSHIP. 

afford to pass it by on the other side of the road, 
or merely to lift his hat to it in passing, or even 
to grasp it by the hand in a friendly way and wish 
it "Good Morning." He and the Sunday School are 
not merely passing acquaintances ; they are intimate 
friends; they are fellow pilgrims in the kingdom, 
and a large part of the responsibility for its efficiency 
rests upon him. 

A second condition is intimate acquaintance with 
the personnel of the teaching force. The pastor 
should be well informed as to the personal charac- 
teristics of the teachers. He should seek in all ways 
to gain and maintain influence over them. 

A third condition is knowledge of the kind of 
work which is done in the school. How can the 
pastor hold up the lofty ideal for the superintendent 
and teachers and scholars, and enforce it effectively, 
without a knowledge of how far short of the ideal 
the school falls? 

A fourth condition — he must understand how to 
combine the ideal with the practical. A high ideal 
may be used as a means of inspiring or as a means 
of depressing; all depends upon the way it is pre- 
sented. A teacher of long experience who had a 
very sensitive conscience on the subject of Sunday 
School work attended a Sunday School convention 
and heard a well educated minister describe the 
qualifications of the Sunday School teacher. These 
qualifications were set forth in terms so exacting 
and high, and such impatience was expressed with 
teachers who were unwilling to struggle to realize 



THE PASTOR'S SUNDAY SCHOOL PROBLEM. 175 

this ideal, that an effect exactly opposite to that 
intended was produced. The teacher went and said 
to the pastor, "Pastor, I will resign my class next 
Sunday. I am not fitted to teach a Sunday School 
class." The difficulty with the speaker was that he 
failed to make proper allowance for the imperfec- 
tions of the average teacher. The result was that 
the most faithful and conscientious were repelled, 
while perhaps the less faithful were not impressed. 
It is a delicate point in the management of a school, 
as it is in the management of a congregation, to 
present the lofty ideals so that they inspire, and 
not so that they depress. The presentation of an 
ideal in one spirit is virtually a denunciation, in 
another spirit it is a noble appeal. No one can do 
successful work who is not content to labor patiently 
and long with very imperfect materials, or who 
grows discouraged because results are not equal to 
expectation or progress is not sufficiently rapid. 
The best union of the ideal and the practical is to 
live under the influence of the ideal even when long 
periods of slow plodding toil must precede the at- 
tainment of the desired goal. 

As aiding toward the above ends, by all means 
the pastor ought to keep in his library a few of the 
best books on the Sunday School, and indeed from 
time to time ought to refresh his mind on the sub- 
ject by reading a new book. It would be wise if 
every pastor would make it a rule never to let a 
year pass without reading at least one good book 
on preaching and one on missions and one on the 



176 PASTORAI, LEADERSHIP. 

Sunday School. The literature of the Sunday 
School is growing- rapidly. Good books on the sub- 
ject can be found by any pastor who is fully alive 
to the importance of the subject. 

In conclusion it may be said that while the Sun- 
day School problem is a difficult and delicate one, 
it is worthy of the pastor's most strenuous en- 
deavors. It is in this department that his most 
splendid trophies of the power of the gospel may 
be won. The real test of any pastor is the ability 
and skill to utilize spiritual forces to produce spir- 
itual results. This rule sums up the total problem 
of the pastor, of which that of the Sunday school 
is a part. Efficiency is the ultimate test of any man 
in any calling, just as the final test of a knife is 
not the polish on the handle, or the shape, or the 
size, but solely the edge of the blade. The one ques- 
tion as to a knife is "Will it cut ?" The test of the 
shoemaker's apprentice, when he conies to the end 
of his apprenticeship, is not his knowledge of leather, 
and thread, and tacks, and lasts, and tools, but the 
practical ability and skill to combine these items of 
knowledge in the construction of shoes which will 
fit human feet. And so the final test of the pastor 
is his ability and skill in combining all the items of 
information which he has acquired in the college, 
in the seminary, in the experiences of life, and by 
the study of the problems of the kingdom, in bring- 
ing to pass spiritual results ; and hence I close, as I 
began, by asserting that nothing is of greater prac- 
tical importance to the pastor than a master} of the 
problem of the Sunday School. 



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